Affirmations – Top Tips
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.
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 this section.
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.