Positive Affirmations

Hey, this is Leo for Actualized.org and in today’s quick self-help segment we’re going to talk about positive affirmations. Alright, so what are affirmations? How do they work? Do they actually work? And can you use them to create positive changes in your life?

The answer is, of course, yes you can use them.

If you study personal development, and if you study this stuff as much as I have, literally over thousands of dollars-worth, hundreds of books, the best seminars, and you study all these people that are into personal development you see that they are all on board with positive affirmations. I’m on board with it too.

I’ve been using them for about six months, actively, and I’ve been getting some amazing results. So I want to share with you some of my helpful tidbits and tips and techniques for how to get positive affirmations to work magic in your life.

What Is An Affirmation?

Basically, a positive affirmation is simply a short statement that you say to yourself and repeat to yourself to get your subconscious mind reprogrammed and thinking along an empowering train of thought.

So what’s an example?

One that I’m using right now is simply this: “I am a millionaire.” That’s my affirmation. What I do is repeat it to myself again and again. So it would go something like this: “I am a millionaire, I am a millionaire, I am a millionaire, I am a millionaire, I am a millionaire, I am a millionaire.” That’s basically it. Pretty simple right?

Of course, I am not technically, right now, a millionaire even though I am financially independent. So what is going on here? Why would I be saying this to myself? Isn’t this delusional? Isn’t this unrealistic? Isn’t this just fantasy?

Well, when you go after goals and you start to get on board with this idea that you have a lot of potential within you that you’re not actualizing right now, then you’re starting to understand that in order to get to where you want to be you have to have some sort of faith, some sort of confidence.

In anything successful that you’ve done in your life we can pretty much go through that history that you’ve gone through and notice that the places that you succeeded at were the places where you were confident. Where you had some sort of faith that something would happen, some sort of vision beyond current reality.

Those places that you failed were places that you were very doubtful, second guessing yourself, very fearful, and you were very pinned down by current circumstances and current reality. So the point of affirmations is to create empowering messages to your mind.

Reprogramming the Subconscious Mind

You have your conscious mind and your subconscious mind and the subconscious mind tends to be very stubborn and it tends to want to stay where it currently is. It tends to want to continue to produce the results you’ve been getting the rest of your life. So the reason, for example, that I have this affirmation that I want to be a millionaire is because I’ve been dealing with some limiting beliefs around money. I’ve been doubting whether I could be a millionaire.

I needed to reprogram my subconscious mind to believe that I could be a millionaire. A very simple, magical, almost unbelievable fact about your subconscious mind is that it believes whatever you repeat to it consistently. And it doesn’t matter how true or false the statement is. Whatever you repeat to your subconscious mind consistently, eventually, it just soaks that in. The subconscious mind is like a sponge.

How To Actually Do Affirmations

There are a few tricks here that you have to follow for affirmations to work for you. So I’m going to go down and give you my quick little how-to list.

When you’re doing affirmations, a couple things you want to make sure you’re doing.

Number one, and this is the most important part, is that you have to do your affirmations daily. Every single day without missing a day. That means you do it today. You do it tomorrow. You do it the next day. You do it the following day. You do it again, and again, and again, and again, and the next week, and the next week, and the next month.

And you just keep doing it. Drill it in to your subconscious.

Your subconscious is like an animal mind, it’s not thinking logically about things. This principle that your mind will take on whatever you feed it, regardless of truth or falsity, this principle only works through brute force and repetition.

So you say it to yourself consistently, all the time. It’s like training a dog. That’s basically what you’re doing. You have that dog mind inside of you somewhere. You have a mind that is very basic and primitive. Beyond the conscious mind we have as humans, we have this subconscious primitive mind.

This primitive mind has to be trained through brute repetition. The key there is to not miss a single day. The way that I do affirmations is in five minute periods. I will literally take a timer, and I will set aside some time in the morning or the evening, some quiet time to myself, where I just sit down. I press the timer for five minutes. I just press the timer and then I go and I start doing the affirmations and I will repeat for five minutes straight.

I will say to myself, “I am a millionaire. I am a millionaire. I am a millionaire. I am a millionaire.” I say this for five whole minutes straight, without any distractions, without any interruptions. You have to do this in a very quiet environment. You can do it with your eyes open or you can also do it with your eyes closed.

So that’s it, that’s pretty much how affirmations work. But, you have to do that all the time, you have to do it consistently. I would say at least for a month of affirmations on whatever specific issue you want to be working on.

So if it’s money and you want to work on an abundance of money, then you would say this, “I am a millionaire” affirmation for at least a month straight without missing a single day. Maybe even two months or three months depending on how much trouble you’re having in that area. The more of a problem you’re having there, the more deep seeded that problem is, that limiting belief, the more grounded it is in childhood events, then the more you’re going to have to use the affirmations.

So that’s basically the most important thing, is to do it consistently. This is where most people fail, is that they don’t do it consistently, they do it on and off, and so they don’t get the results. If you’re not going to do it consistently and every day, 100%, then don’t even do affirmations, they’re not going to work for you. Either do them consistently or don’t do them at all.

Keep It Simple

Now, if you do do them consistently then you’re going to want to remember a few points about affirmations. The next point is that an affirmation is a short concise phrase, ideally a phrase not even a sentence. So notice, in this example that we’re using, “I am a millionaire”, is a very short, simple phrase.

This is not some long winded, airy fairy, conceptual, philosophical statement or some sort of flowery mission statement or some paragraph or short story about yourself. This is a simple little phrase and you want to keep it that way. Always keep as few words in your affirmation as you can get. Just to get the gist across.

So keep them short, keep them sweet, keep them pithy, because your subconscious mind likes those slogans. This is something that you want to be able to repeat to yourself many, many times within five minutes. It needs to be something you don’t need to read off a piece of paper. Just memorize it. Something very simple: “I am a millionaire, I am a millionaire, I am a millionaire.”

Let me throw out some more examples for you. How about, “I have unlimited energy. I have unlimited energy. I have unlimited energy. I have unlimited energy.”

How about, “I love being confident. I love being confident. I love being confident. I love being confident.”

How about, for those procrastinators in the crowd, “I am always taking action. I am always taking action. I am always taking action. I am always taking action.”

You can literally come up with an affirmation for any problem area in your life or any kind of goal you set for yourself. So whether it’s a fitness goal, a relationship goal, money goals, career goals, business goals, hobby goals, any kind of personal development goals, any kind of thoughts that you want to have, you can create an affirmation for it. It’s such a flexible technique, which is why it’s so powerful and awesome.

Keep It Positive

Ok, on to the next point. We talked about keeping the phrases short, I gave you some short examples, the next point is make sure they are stated in the positive. So notice, if I’m struggling with money, and I have limiting beliefs around money, I’m still going to use a positive affirmation to work on that.

I’m not going to say, “I’m not going to go broke. I’m not going to go broke. I’m not going to go broke.” Don’t do that! Instead, flip it around and say it in the positive, “I’m going to be wealthy. I’m going to be wealthy. I’m going to be wealthy. I’m going to be wealthy.”

State stuff in the positive, always. This can be a little bit tricky, especially for some of us negative thinkers who are always caught in this idea that we have to be moving away from things.

Whether you’re stuck and you’re unhealthy right now, and you say, “I just want to be to my normal health. I don’t want to be super healthy, I just don’t want to be unhealthy.” So in that case, you might have this natural tendency to say, “Well, I’m no longer fat. I’m no longer fat. I’m no longer fat.” You might do an affirmation like that. But that is a negative affirmation.

You want to flip it around and say, “I am fit. I am fit. I am fit.” Or, “I am at my ideal weight.” Pick a number, pick whatever weight you want to be at. For me, it was 170, so, “I’m at 170. I’m at 170. I’m at 170.” Whatever that is, make sure it’s positive. It’s always got to be positive.

Because your mind, your subconscious mind especially, tends to exclude that “not” — that negative part. So when you say, “I don’t want to be fat”, what happens is your mind crosses out the “don’t” and it says, “I want to be fat.” It just has the picture of “fat”.

You want to move your mind off of the negative pictures and on to positive pictures. So this is also dovetailing with visualization. That is also an important point: keeping stuff positive.

Begin Affirmations With “I Am”

Another point is, start your affirmations, if you can, with “I am”. It’s nice to start an affirmation with “I am” because this goes towards your identity. This goes towards shaping your self-image and who you are at the core.

So if I say, “I am a millionaire”, that’s something about me. That’s like me saying that there’s something within me that is generating money, that is attracting money, it’s like I was born to be a millionaire. I’m more identified with that statement. This is shaping my self-image on a deep level if I do it repeatedly.

Whereas if I say, “I have lots of money” or something like, “I’m making lots of money” that’s not so much identity based. You want to make sure your affirmations are grounded in identity. So, “I’m always confident. I’m just a confident type person. I am naturally confident.”

You want to make sure the things that you’re adopting are natural to you. That you’re stepping into that role, that you’re role playing it, you’re feeling it. So, if you want to be more confident, you’re naturally confident. If you want to be wealthy, you’re naturally wealthy. You don’t struggle to be wealthy, you just naturally are. That is a more powerful way to go about it.

So, “I am”. “I am…this”, “I am….that”, “I am healthy”, “I am wealthy”, whatever you want it to be.

Make Affirmations Specific

Next is, be specific. Use specific affirmations. The more specific you can make it the better. Do you want to be earning a certain dollar amount every year? Put that into your affirmation.

Do you want to be driving a certain type of car, with a certain model on it? Put that into your affirmation.

Do you want to be living in a certain state, in a certain city, in a certain neighborhood, in a certain house on a certain street? Put that into your affirmation.

The more specific, the more your mind will latch on to the details and feel like it’s real.

State Affirmations In The Present

The next point, and the last point I think I’ll make, is to make sure your affirmations are stated in the present tense. What does this mean?

Well, I can say, “I will be a millionaire” or I can say, “I am a millionaire, right now.” This one’s a little tricky and it took me some time to get my mind around it, because I always tend to say, “Well, I’m not a millionaire right now. I can believe the fact that maybe I’ll be a millionaire in the future but it sounds silly to say I’m a millionaire right now.”

No! The point of the affirmation is that you’re trying to instill something inside yourself, a belief, a sense of confidence and faith. To do that, you say that you are right now even though you are not. So yes, in the outer world right now, I am not a millionaire. That’s just a matter of fact. But, in my inner world I am reprogramming myself in saying, “I am a millionaire.”

I’m trying to get in touch with that feeling of being a millionaire. What does it feel like? What does a millionaire think like? What does a millionaire visualize? I’m trying to take on that role.

The way that you do that is not by imagining you’re going to be a millionaire some time in the future, it’s about drilling into your mind that you’re a millionaire right now and trusting that that will have its effect. It will have its effect because that tried and true principle, that whatever you say to your mind over and over is what it’s going to absorb, is always at play.

So, if that’s the case, wouldn’t you want to leverage that as best you can and feed yourself with the most powerful affirmations possible? Well, I do, that’s why I put them in the present tense.

Wrap Up

Alright, so those are my points about positive affirmations. There’s more to this, there’s more tips and techniques about affirmations that I will cover in other videos. In fact, it’s part of my personal development blueprint that you can find at Actualized.org/blueprint, I have a thing there on affirmations.

This is going to do it here. Please go ahead and start doing affirmations, it’s an amazing technique for getting yourself on top of your goals and working out some of your limiting beliefs, some of the stuff holding you back in life.

I’m going to be signing off here, go ahead share this, like this and visit Actualized.org where I have amazing stuff, other techniques that you can use alongside affirmations, like visualization, contemplation, and other stuff that you can use to really get you to that next level in life that you want to be at. You can also sign up for my newsletter there which is also going to give you free videos every week just like this one right in your inbox.