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Most Affirmations Don't Work - How To Supercharge Yours - Part 1

by: DebbieThomas
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Over the last several years, the personal development world has been taken by storm by the Law of Attraction, and while many people have been quietly practicing this for decades, it came into the mainstream with the movie 'The Secret.' One of the most important things I've learned from everyone from James Ray, Jack Canfield, Joe Vitale, Bob Doyle, Sandy Forster, Bob Proctor and many more is that if you focus on what you want and persistently and consistently tell yourself that you have these things, you will come to Believe it. Once you Believe it, then you will be inspired to take the actions you need to take that will bring what you want to you. Hence the saying, When I Believe it, I will See it.

Our magnificent brains process and store every single bit of information that we have ever learned or experienced. When it comes to learning new things, the way our brain learns new things is by REPETITION. Think about it. How does an actress master the dialog in a play - repetition. How does an athlete become the best at what they do - repetition. Everything we've learned, from times tables to walking and talking has been learned by repetition. So it would seem reasonable that if you want to teach your brain to believe differently, the way to do it would be by repeating what you now want to believe about yourself and your life.

That makes perfect sense, doesn't it? If you keep repeating something over and over to your self, your subconscious mind should start to agree with you, right? So we start to use Affirmations. Affirmations are simply statements you make about what you really WANT to believe. Almost every personal development expert on the planet has recommended affirmations and THE best tool to 'Fake it til you Make it,' and keep up the positive attitude, because the repetition of the affirmation is teaching your brain how to think.

Still logical isn't it? If we just repeat our affirmations over and over and over, we should all be healthy, wealthy and wise, right? Sounds pretty easy doesn't it? So....Why aren't we all fabulously wealthy if we know this should work? Because we just DON'T DO THEM on a regular basis or for long enough. There are two reasons for this:

1. We start the process hoping for instant change, but we don't really believe what we are saying, so when the instant change doesn't appear, we stop before we ever even start, and

2. Sometimes things happen to upset our nicely laid out plans and if we don't have an anchor to grab, or a tool to help us stop the negative downward spiral, we let it overtake us and we give up, thinking 'this stuff doesn't work.'

So, one of the main reasons we don't keep doing our affirmations, even though we know they should work is because we are talking about trying to change deep seated Belief systems here. It's not as easy as changing your mind about what you want for dinner. Research has shown that most of the things we believe about ourselves were implanted deep into our subconscious before the age of 7. So if you have a deeply rooted belief that all rich people are money grubbers, you can repeat that you are fabulously wealthy until you are blue in the face and you won't get anywhere. If your affirmations keep bouncing off the walls of your Beliefs and returning with "We don't want to be like that" - eventually you will either lose interest, get bored, get too busy or just plain give up in frustration long before the the affirmations even begin to take hold.

Now if you did keep on practicing diligently, you would eventually see a change, but since you belief filters won't allow you to change instantly, most people give up in frustration far too soon. But it's really not your fault, at least not your conscious mind's fault.

Here's the rub. We really are made up of two minds - our conscious mind and our subconscious mind - AKA your ego. Our subconscious mind - the one that runs all the minute parts of you that you have no conscious idea are going on (like oxygen and the right nutrients to every single cell in your body) is really the one who is in charge. It has been operating you just fine all these years and likes you just the way you are - even if that is broke and miserable. It knows that program. So when you consciously start to interfere with its operation of YOU, it takes offense. So you begin out of the blue to affirm that "I am successful and free" and it constantly feeds back "No you're not - are you nuts?" So you try to force the change and it will come back at your with every reason in the book why this is a stupid exercise and a waste of your valuable time. This 'Belief Detective' as I call it will keep you right where you are if you can't get past it, or at least acknowledge what is happening. The great irony in all of this is that it truly believe it is protecting you. Go figure!

So what do I do now, you ask? You need to start thinking right now about how to bypass the guardian of your 'Belief Detective.' One way to do this is to put your affirmations into a song. Your subconscious mind stops being on guard when you are singing. It's called suspending your disbelief, much like you do when you see a movie (or did you really believe in Spiderman). And once you get a song stuck in your head, you usually sing it all day long, thus feeding your subconscious on autopilot. Think about it right now and stay tuned for Part 2 where we discuss how to change your negative attitude instantly.

About the Author

Debbie Thomas has created AttitudeZapz! Affirmation Jingles. These short, catchy jingles with affirmations built right in will help you keep motivated and focused on your dreams and goals.

Most Affirmations Don't Work - How To Supercharge Yours - Part 1

About the Author

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