Here is a collection of ideas, tips, and techniques to
enhance and add power to your affirmation work.

* Visualization:
Add images to your affirmations. Close your eyes and use the
power of your imagination to visualize a picture image of what you affirm.
In your mind, see the picture of that "house you want." Carry a mental
picture of it through the day with you. Take an actual picture of something
and post it all over your mirrors and house. Find a pleasing image on a
postcard or greeting card, and post these on the ceiling over your bed.
Picture numbers in your checkbook, hundred dollar bills, smiles on the faces
of people you love, your ideal weight, your ideal health. Use your
imagination's intuition to create a symbolic image: See your heart glowing
with health--warm glowing healing light. Create a movie of yourself jogging
through that marathon finish marker.

* Reminders:
Place your affirmations in regularly visited places around
the house as reminders. Write them on sticky notes or full sheets of paper
and place them on the mirror you use to get ready for work each morning.
While you're getting your body ready for the world, your notes are getting
your mind ready for the world. Call your answering machine and leave
affirmation messages for yourself or someone else -- a soothing affirmation
or reminder when phone messages are checked each day. Leave an affirmation
tape in your home or car tape player, ready to play when the car is started
or the stereo is turned on after a busy work day. Set your computer up to
send automated affirmations to your work fax at timed intervals. Do this for
a friend. Mail yourself or a friend some affirmations in the mail. You'll
get them in about three days. Make up a stack of affirmations for each week,
or each month, and place them in pre addressed stamped envelopes addressed
to yourself. Give these to a friend who will be willing to mail each packet
at weekly, or monthly intervals. And, of course, don't forget the bathroom.
Place something positive on wall space uniquely visible to the toilet. I
placed a copy of The Desiderata front and center, and each morning I
practiced memorizing the sentences and wisdom.

* Writing Power:
A powerful way to enhance your affirmation work is to write
them using First, Second, and Third person perspectives. Write the
affirmation ten times in the First person: "I, Russell Alexander, am a
happy, healthy, wholesome person." Next, write it ten more times from the
Second person: "You, Russell Alexander, are a happy, healthy, wholesome
person." Finally, write it ten more times from the Third person: "He,
Russell Alexander, is a happy, healthy, wholesome person." This technique
creates affirmation not only from within your own self, but provides a
general statement from all people and the surrounding world. Add the pronoun
"We," and you are affirming something with all the world, group, or family.
A Note: The more powerful our positive affirmation work, the
more likely it will stimulate any opposing ideas embedded in out thinking
processes -- negative beliefs. One technique to deal with this is to write
them down as well. If you notice a negative thought as you are writing the
positive affirmation, write it down on the next line. Awareness is change,
and writing a negative response to an affirmation can increase awareness and
clarity of what stands in the way. Simply exposing the negative belief to
our awareness diminishes its power. Do this only during the first few days
of any new affirmation work, then discontinue writing anything negative. It
is done only to achieve clarity and awareness, and not with any repetition.
Save some of your negative responses, and go back to them later with some
liquid paper. Erase the negative belief and write over it with the positive
affirmation -- great visualization for correcting negative beliefs. Don't
save them, but draw a line through them as soon as you write them down,
striking them from your mind as soon as they come into it.

* People Power:
Practice your affirmations with a trusted friend. Sit
comfortably face to face, and say your affirmation in the First person: "I,
Russell Alexander, am thoroughly peaceful." Have your friend say it back in
the Second person, "You, Russell Alexander, are thoroughly peaceful." Then
say it together, "We, (both names), are thoroughly peaceful," or say it
together in the Third person, "He, Russell Alexander, is thoroughly
peaceful."

Add verbal power to your affirmation work by simply working
it into your dialogue with other people during the course of a day. When the
timing is right, work it into your conversation. Remember to verbally state
your affirmation to someone. This makes it true. Verbalizing something to a
person, family, group, or the world, lends power to the statement. Say it to
someone at the bus stop when the ask how you're doing: "I am feeling
thoroughly peaceful today." See your affirmation in other people and say it
in the Second person: "You are very peaceful." Finding it and validating it
in other people lends power to your own work.

* Recordings:
Place your affirmations on tape and play them back while you
are driving to work, driving on a trip, or working around the house. Play
them through the headphones of your sports player while you're exercising.
Have someone else record the affirmation for you, professionally done in a
soothing voice, with music in the background, or have someone close to you
record your affirmations. Make it a combination tape. Record some in your
own voice, have other voices stating the affirmations in the Second, Third
person. Get all your friends to record a chant with your affirmation. Make
up a song with your affirmation. Be creative and have some of your musically
inclined friends contribute with accompaniment and chorus. Make a delightful
tape, with voices and sounds that you trust and feel good about. Play it
often.

* Word Power:
Sit down with pencil and paper and just start writing positive words. Fill
up the whole page with beautifully, positive, peaceful, healing, spiritual,
compassionate, patient, wholesome, intuitive, thoughtful, incredible,
healthy, vibrant WORDS ... Just Words. If you missed it, an example of
affirming Words and Phrases can be found by following all the letters in ..

R a
i n
b o
w

Make sure to find your way back here and finish reading the Handbook.
* List Your Qualities:
Take some time out to make a list of all your
accomplishments, qualities, awards, recognitions, achievements, good deeds,
talents, creations, blessings, positive characteristics. No room on this
list for failures or inadequacies. It's not that type of list. With pen in
hand, paper on the table, in a quite area, spend a good hour thinking about
this. Write everything down as it comes to you. Think back through your
life, and list only the good, positive things. The list will be quite long.
List every award at school, every teacher's positive remarks, all worldly
accomplishments, skills and talents with people or things, creative talents,
characteristics. Put it down if you think of it. Don't edit the list. If you
made the highest score on a college math test, but didn't finish college,
put down "talented with math." List everything that you think of. It's just
a practice in positive thinking and affirmation. You're not trying to prove
anything. Remind yourself that it's just an exercise. You're not trying to
prove to yourself that you've done more good than bad. Make a list like this
regularly, at least yearly. You don't have to have BIG accomplishments on
your list.

Example: Good with computers, Honest with people, Know how
to work with wood, Know how to fix cars, Get along with people, People like
my company, Good conversationalist, Saved in my retirement fund, Good cook,
Keep a clean house, Not bothered by petty things, Clean driving record,
Responsible, Graduated High School, Have excellent friends, Trusted by
others.

* Affirmations From Problems:
You can turn problems and discomfort into affirmations.
First write a simple statement about your discomfort or problem -- What is
the Core Belief surrounding your problem or discomfort. Write it in a single
sentence. Example: I don't measure up in my relationships. Now, invert the
sentence. Write out the exact contradiction of this. Example: I am complete,
whole, sufficient, thoroughly mature and responsible in all my
relationships. What was getting me down, provided the key to a very powerful
affirmation, one that is exactly what the doctor ordered. Find another
person you trust, and say your new affirmation out loud, verbalize it with
eye contact. The Core Belief will pull at you the first time you say this,
but continue saying it, with eye contact, ten or fifteen times. You will
notice that the energy surrounding the core belief dissipates as you
continue saying the new affirmation.

Use this technique as a powerful way to work with negative
beliefs. Invert your negative belief and turn it into a positive
affirmation. As a negative belief is recognized, think what the exact
contradiction would be. Then, verbally practice the contradicting statements
aloud, with increasing sureness, genuineness, and power. Make the statement
until you can say it very powerfully and genuinely.