Positive Affirmations for Positive Luck!
Positive affirmations. So many self-help gurus tote this sort of stuff. If you’ve heard about positive affirmations before, it’s not surprising.
But hearing about it and believing in it are two different things. I should know.
Keep in mind, I’m a litigator (since 1998) turned life coach (began 2014, certified 2015) and at first I honestly thought that the concept of “positive affirmations” was nothing but a big, raging, mental foo-foo fest.
Two years later…how do I feel about it now? Do I think it helps my individual clients who employ it?
Yep.
And why should you care? Stay tuned….
An affirmation is defined as a positive assertion. Affirmations (or assertions) have often been utilized as a way to plant the seeds of success in one’s subconscious mind, which is best harnessed through the brain’s reticular activating system or “RAS.” When you give the brain input as it’s collected through the conscious mind, the RAS filters it all, keeping and/or actively focusing its attention on what is deemed important or relevant. If you have your WHY firmly established and have set up S.M.A.A.R.T. goals to achieve a life that’s more in harmony with that WHY, you’ve already set up an efficient filter through which all your life’s data will be processed. In theory, this means that your believable goals become more achievable.
Businessman and philanthropist W. Clement Stone once said, “Whatever the mind …can can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” It’s possible to program your mind to effectively find the strength and the moxie for you to walk boldly through those obstacles, if you allow yourself to be open to the concept in the first place. And face it…if you were in the position to conceive and achieve nearly anything you desired in life, wouldn’t it make you, in effect, a far luckier person?
Of course!
So how do you properly access the potential power of a positive affirmation?
You would take a statement that is positive in nature, say it to yourself in the first person (“I” not “you”) and in the present tense (“I am” not “I will be”).
You can write them out if you like as opposed to saying them aloud or internally–many case studies support the effectiveness of any of the methods their subjects employed. So don’t worry about form…focus on substance instead.
Examples of positive affirmations would include, “I am lucky, I am open to success, I am a winner,” OR “I am smart, I am successful, I am happy.”
But before you say, “I am sick of this nonsense,” consider this:
A meta-analysis conducted by Tracy Epton by the University of Manchester, England revealed that self-affirmation “does indeed improve message acceptance, intentions and behavior.” David Creswell of Carnegie Mellon University examined the link between problem-solving under pressure and self-affirmation (a process of identifying and focusing on one’s most important values). In Mr. Cresswell’s study, the subjects more effectively protected themselves from the damaging effects of stress in relation to their problem-solving performance.
Still not convinced that affirmations/self-affirmations are truly useful? Perhaps it would help you to know that Cresswell’s research team has documented that by simply engaging in a brief self-affirmation activity at the beginning of a school term, otherwise underperforming college students were able to boost their academic scores by the end of a single semester.
Hello.
Maybe the energy you spend nay-saying positive affirmations is better spent harnessing the power of your mind instead, so that you can live in harmony with your WHY and best achieve your S.M.A.A.R.T. goals.
You think?
Grab our 43-page eBook, “The Woman-101 31-Day Life Reboot Guide” FREE, by joining the Woman-101 Hoot-Whoot! Club. Go to: www.woman-101.com and join us!
Want more help on this front? Try the book, You Can If You Think You Can, by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, available on Amazon.
