OK, sometimes they do. But it’s pretty random, isn’t it? Or at least it seems that way.
People often gripe that affirmations work just great for the little stuff, but when it comes to the big things they really want, the things that are really important, well.. . they usually conclude something about screen doors on submarines or wart hogs of unusual anatomy.
At the most basic level, for instance, you may be saying “I have eleven million dollars in the bank,” and then there’s that other part of your mind that’s saying “Yeah right.”
Or you may be going about it in a more sophisticated way, listing out all the “yeah right” responses and making new affirmations to counter them (and then, countering the “yeah right”s for those affirmations, ad infinitum…)
But the bottom line is that when you say or write an affirmation, your brain is not stupid. It knows what you’re doing. It knows you are making a statement about something that you want (maybe) but do not have (definitely.) And it makes a note “Yup. Still don’t have 11 million dollars in the bank.”
So why does everybody say it works? Well, to sell books, audio programs, and workshops, for three. And, because it can move you closer to what you want (and even get you there) to the extent that your affirmations – when worded properly, and you know all that – get you thinking more about what you want than what you don’t want. (And if they don’t do that – if they only get you thinking about what you don’t have – they can actually make things worse.)
It’s all in the attitude. If you want to use affirmations, and you want them to work, you need to come up with wording that’s going to put you in the state where you have what you want, of course, no question.
Say you know you have milk in the fridge. If you think about going to get a glass of milk (or, OK, chug it out of the container) your brain never kicks in to say “Nope, still don’t have 11 million gallons of milk in the fridge.” You just have a feeling of of-courseness about it.
So don’t spend your time telling your brain how much money you have in the bank. Catch it off guard by occasionally wondering if you should order your Tesla Roadster now, or clean out the garage first so you have a place to park it.
