Success through affirmations
I’m going to tell you about the tool that works like a miracle to give you what you desire. This is one of the most important things you will know about.
What if I told you that you can achieve anything in life, be it learning a musical instrument, mastering a new language, getting lean and muscular, or anything else?
I’m going to tell you about the tool that works like a miracle to give you what you desire. This is one of the most important things you will know about. It sure was for me. That tool is affirmations.
What are affirmations?
The concept of affirmations is not new. Norman Vincent Peale wrote about them in 1952 in his book The Power of Positive Thinking. I, however, learned about affirmations in 2016 when I read a book called How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams. Scott is one of the biggest proponents of affirmations.
In the words of Scott Adams:
Affirmations are simply the practice of repeating to yourself what you want to achieve while imagining the outcome you want. You can write it, speak it, or just think it in sentence form.
When you want to achieve something in life, whether it is something material or in terms of any skill, you should say to yourself or write down on a piece of paper several times a day (10 to 15 times or more) that you will work towards it and achieve it. Doing so would vastly increase the odds of you achieving the desired thing.
My experience with affirmations
I experienced the power of affirmations long before I learned about it in 2016.
When I was younger, I used to pray to God every night before going to sleep. And in those prayers, I would ask for things. Some of those things seemed nearly impossible at the time, but a lot of those things materialized in my life like miracles.
To give you just one example: My schooling was done in vernacular language. When I finished high school at age 15, I couldn’t read and understand a book written in English. At the time, to think that one day I’ll speak and write English as well as I do now would have seemed impossible. But here I am. Today, people don’t believe me when I say that I have completed my entire schooling in a vernacular medium.
In my daily prayers, I asked God to give me the ability to master English. What I was doing essentially through those prayers are affirmations. I just didn’t call them affirmations. I called them prayers. As time went by, I grew out of believing in God and stopped saying prayers. And thereby I lost touch with affirmations.
In 2016 when I read about affirmations in Scott Adams’ book, I could instantly connect it to my experience of prayers and the “miraculous” achievements. All of a sudden the secret was revealed to me. It’s the affirmations that worked.
So what’s going on with affirmations?
Whether you believe in God, the Law of Attraction, or need a more logical and scientific explanation for affirmation, one thing you can be sure of is that they work. But of course, the thing you want should be humanly possible.
Here’s my scientific understanding of how affirmations work: The human mind is a complex thing. It doesn’t work in a straightforward way as we would like it to. You can’t just say “I want to achieve this-and-this”, and glide through to achieving it. There are distractions and you lose focus. There are also demotivating factors that derail the mind. But if you hack your mind, you can get it to do what you want from it.
Affirmations are a mind-hack. They keep the mind focused on goals. They keep reminding you of your destination so that your mind quickly spots the influences that are going to help you reach there.
Not only do affirmations draw your mind toward positive influences, but they also help you keep away from negative influences that may otherwise derail you. For example, if one of your affirmations is “I will always stay lean and healthy”, it will be easy for you to learn about and stick to a healthy diet, avoid smoking, and find ways to avoid any and all health problems. It’s like your mind will always be on the lookout for information and guidance for healthy living.
The science of it lies in something called Reticular Activating System (RAS) in our brain. RAS is a filtering mechanism in the human brain that provides the brain with all the information and stimuli pertinent to what it is focused on.
Affirmations employ your RAS. Once you start doing affirmations, you’ll magically start finding ways that you didn’t see before. That’s because your mind didn’t notice them through all the noise. In that regard, I can’t overstate the importance of affirmations.
How to do affirmations?
There are no fixed rules around doing affirmations, but here are a few pointers I’d give you to craft your affirmations.
Don’t be too specific in your affirmations. For example, if your aim is to learn guitar, don’t say “I’ll learn guitar in two years”. Instead, just say “I’ll learn guitar”. Affirmations are not a science like physics where you can apply x amount of force for y amount of time and be sure of the outcome. Leave out details like timelines from affirmations
Keep the affirmations clear and short. The following are some examples:
I will learn guitar
I will own a bigger house and a car
I will be financially independent
Work with 5 to 6 affirmations regularly about the things you most desire. Write them down on a piece of paper 10 to 15 times or more in a day. Or you can just say them aloud to yourself any time your mind is free
Without fail, do them before going to sleep
That’s it. Now spare some time today and think about what you want to achieve. Write down your affirmations. Even if something seems ridiculously impossible, it’s okay to include it in your affirmations as long as it is humanly possible and you seriously desire it.
It’s not magic. Things will not materialize out of thin air without you doing the work but do the affirmations and you will find the mindset, the energy, and the external guidance to do the work.
You should do affirmations even if you find it difficult to believe in them, because as Scott Adams says, doing affirmations doesn’t cost anything even if they don’t work. But if they do work, it will change your freakin’ reality!