Let’s talk about techniques – part 2

The rules for making an affirmation are simple. For making a positive one, it must not be negative in any way and it must be in the present tense. All the other types of affirmations you already know because everything you say or think (consciously or unconsciously) is an affirmation.

It is important to understand that affirmations are not exactly true or false – they are merely possibilities. They are the lies we tell ourselves and then behave in accordance with as if they were truth. In some sense they motivate us. For example, a small infant might be told by his mother that he must wait for an adult to help him cross the street and go over to his friend’s house. To make him understand the importance of this, she might try to increase his motivation to do as she says by telling him, “if you go out in the street by yourself a car will hit you and you will be killed.” This is neither a lie nor the truth, just merely a possibility that becomes a motivation factor for our behavior. It is important to understand that affirmations are, in the best sense, merely a possibility that will become a motivation factor for our behavior.

So why do positive affirmations? We do them because one of the usual things we already say to ourselves is not very helpful to us as a motivation factor. An example of this would be, “my life sucks!” That’s the kind of thing we say to ourselves when we experience difficulties and it is the kind of self-talk that doesn’t give you any ambition to make efforts to get what you want in life. Put simply, we do positive affirmations so we can have the courage to keep trying to get what we want out of life. So, in the case of “my life sucks,” we change that to “my life is great/I love and accept myself exactly as I am/the universe supports my ambitions/life is for me/I easily overcome obstacles.” When that is what we are thinking in the morning when we wake up, it is much easier to get out of bed.

The secret to creating a positive affirmation is to listen to what you say to yourself and, if it is something negative, transform it into a more supportive form of self-talk. Mirror work can be a great help in this process. If you stand in front of a mirror, look right in your own eyes and say “I love you,” it might surprise you to find out how much negative stuff is right on the tip of your tongue. In my experience, people have a lot of mixed emotions when confronted with their own image. You might be busy expressing your self-love when you suddenly say, “I need to lose some weight/look at all those wrinkles/my lips are too (thick/thin)/I’m too old/young” and the list just goes on from there.

In the case of “I’m too fat (I need to lose some weight) that might appear to be an accurate assessment. In reality, you would be better off to say “I am the perfect weight.” Both statements are in the present tense which means you can do nothing about them at this particular moment – you are just stuck with this situation for now. Only the latter one lets you feel good about yourself at present.

We tend to believe we must hate what we are at the moment in order to get better in the future but my experience has shown that is not true. I taught college age students at the end of my working career and I quickly saw that if I told them they were stupid and needed a lot of education if they were ever going to get anywhere that, very soon, my students would be poorly motivated and would eventually become resistant to any effort to educate them. On the other hand, if I told them that they were doing well and making good progress, they tended to work hard and do well. So, I asked myself, why are we bad teachers to ourselves with our self-talk? Understanding that we need to be encouraging in order to get good results is the very reason that I am so happy with using positive affirmations and that is exactly the reason why it is better to say to yourself “I am the perfect weight.”

Let’s talk about techniques – part 1

Do you feel like you are on a train that is not always heading where you want it to go? I think many people would agree that is sometimes how it feels. It became so strong a feeling for me that I eventually became desperate to find a way to stop the “Train.” So here is the way I do that.

First understand that when I least expect it I will start thinking something that either scares or immobilizes me. Have you ever experienced that? It was the train I couldn’t get off and it always took me places I didn’t like. I would start to do something I had been planning to do and all of a sudden I would start to see a daydream-like image in my mind that would show me how things would come out badly because of the result of what I was doing. For example, maybe I was making a bird feeder and as I nailed it together I would start to see my cat sitting on a nearby wall and pouncing on the birds as they were lured in to use it. Suddenly I would feel doubtful that I should finish constructing such a nice thing. Or when I went to bed I would suddenly see a mental image of a neighbor with whom I had once argued who was peeking in my window with a malicious look on his face. This would result in making me nervous enough that I would have a great difficulty getting to sleep.

The first thing one must do is to realize that this is just a “story” that the mind has made up to discourage or frighten oneself. Still, of course, the discouraging or frightening image is still there in the mind and I must do something to get rid of it. So next I start saying the Hoʻoponopono litinay that I address to my inner child who I am victimizing with all this made up stuff. I say: “I’m sorry/ please forgive me/ I love you/ thank you” over and over until the discomfort I have created has stopped. Now there is an empty place where there once was a strong feeling. If I do not fill it with an appropriate set of affirmations, the negative sensations will simply return when I let myself relax. So I must say a set of affirmations like(for the bird feeder): I love and accept myself just as I am/ I love improving my environment/ everything I do turns out wonderfully/ I trust the universe/ life is for me/ I trust myself/ I know the birds appreciate the extra food during winter. I keep saying the affirmations until I feel positive, happy and relaxed.

This simple and easy technique is a quick way to stop those-train like thoughts and images that run through our lives, making us uncomfortable, or worse, riddled with self-doubt and negative affirmations to direct our lives down the wrong paths. I use it constantly as these moments pop up and work to dismantle the life I would prefer to live. I am so relieved to finally have a way to disembark from that “train to ruin” that has sabotaged my intentions so frequently and frustrated me for so many years. I hope you find this useful and would love to hear about how you are doing to use this method.