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What’s the purpose of affirmations? How can repeating affirmations help you rewire your thinking?
Repeating affirmations is a great tool to envision your ideal reality and motivate you to take action to achieve it. With regular practice, repeating positive affirmations for success can make a tremendous difference in your life by reinforcing more positive and effective ways of thinking.
Here’s how repeating affirmations can help you reprogram your mind for success along with some examples of affirmations you can use for your practice.
What Are Affirmations?
Affirmations are positive, constructive statements that you repeat to yourself as a tool for reprogramming negative thinking to help you change or accomplish something. They’re one of the most effective tools for becoming the person you want to be and achieving your goals. For instance, Muhammad Ali repeated a simple affirmation—“I am the greatest”—over and over and he became the greatest boxer of his time.
Besides Ali, positive thinking and the use of affirmations have helped people like Will Smith, Jim Carrey, Suze Orman, Oprah, and many others achieve success and wealth. Repeating positive affirmations for success can help you develop the mindset (thoughts, beliefs, focus) that you need to increase your level of achievement in any area of your life.
We all talk to ourselves already—we have an unconscious, internal dialogue running through our minds, replaying and interpreting past experiences. Unfortunately, for many people, it works against them. For instance, around 80% of women have self-defeating thoughts daily; many men likely have negative thoughts as well.
However, getting control of this process by actively choosing positive, constructive thoughts is a powerful way to change your life. When you regularly repeat positive affirmations for success, they begin influencing your subconscious mind, transforming your thoughts and actions.
TITLE: The Miracle Morning
AUTHOR: Hal Elrod
TIME: 22
READS: 26.1
IMG_URL: https://www.shortform.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/miracle-morning-cover.jpg
BOOK_SUMMARYURL: the-miracle-morning-summary-hal-elrod
AMZN_ID: B00AKKS278
Do Affirmations Actually Work?
In his review of scientific literature on positive affirmations, addictions counselor Steve Rose noticed that positive affirmations don’t often work the way we expect them to. Despite claims that affirmations help us battle our worst thoughts and moods, studies show that isn’t totally accurate. One study found that using affirmations we don’t already believe may actually make us feel worse.
Another noticed that while listening to positive affirmations may help boost your mood, reading them may lead to unproductive self-reflection.
This doesn’t mean that affirmations are useless, but if you find they make you feel worse, don’t force them. You can’t compel yourself to instantly accept something you don’t believe—yet. So when do affirmations work? Rose says they’re better for affirming beliefs you already hold. One study found stating your values or beliefs out loud can boost your motivation or guide your internal compass.
[su_book__no_more_mr._nice_guy]Examples of Positive Affirmations
Below are some examples of positive affirmations that you can try.
Affirmation for Shedding Limiting Beliefs
According to Gay Hendricks, the author of The Big Leap, reciting positive affirmations for success can help you reprogram your mind from life’s conditioning and limiting beliefs. To that end, he recommends reciting his “Universal Success Mantra”:
“I expand in abundance, success, and love every day, as I inspire those around me to do the same.”
Hendricks recommends repeating it in sequence with your breath in meditation daily. As you repeat it, notice any resistance your mind has to the affirmation. It’s natural—just notice it and go back to repeating the affirmation. It will take practice to retrain your mind; you’re deprogramming from a lifetime of embedded false beliefs.
In addition to setting aside time to focus on your affirmation practice, occasionally just repeat it as you go about your day any time you think of it. You may also want to write the affirmations down on pieces of paper and put them where you’ll see them throughout the day, for example in your house, car, or office, in order to prompt yourself to repeat it regularly.
TITLE: The Big Leap
AUTHOR: Gay Hendricks
TIME: 22
READS: 44.6
IMG_URL: https://www.shortform.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/the-big-leap-cover.png
BOOK_SUMMARYURL: the-big-leap-summary-gay-hendricks
AMZN_ID: XYZ
Affirmation for Developing Self-Faith
An essential prerequisite to achieving success is having unwavering faith or belief that you can do it. If you have faith in yourself and your plans to achieve success—whatever it might look like—it will prompt ideas and associations that lead you to success.
According to Napoleon Hill, the author of the self-help classic Think and Grow Rich, you can develop faith by practicing what he calls autosuggestion—that is, by constantly telling yourself you can succeed and by envisioning yourself succeeding. To do so, make it a habit to practice the following affirmation and you’ll eventually come to believe the things you repeat to yourself:
- I know I have the ability to achieve my specific goal.
- I will concentrate my thoughts for 30 minutes a day on the person I intend to become.
- I will spend 10 minutes a day demanding self-confidence from myself.
- My goal demands that I develop self-confidence to achieve it.
- I will cultivate positive thoughts toward myself and others. I have faith that I will change my thoughts and become self-reliant and successful.
TITLE: Think and Grow Rich
AUTHOR: Napoleon Hill
TIME: 24
READS: 34
IMG_URL: https://www.shortform.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/thinkandgrowrich_cover.jpg
BOOK_SUMMARYURL: think-and-grow-rich-summary-napoleon-hill
AMZN_ID: B07P896HSJ
How to Write Effective Affirmations
The effectiveness of your affirmations depends on how you frame them. In his book The Success Principles, Jack Canfield provides some tips for writing effective, positive affirmations for success:
- Begin with the phrase, “I am…”. As simple as it seems, the phrase “I am…” acts like a command in your brain, telling your brain to feel this as reality or take the steps to make it so.
- Write in present tense. By writing in the present tense, you describe what you want as if you already have it. For example, if you’re single, instead of saying, “I will enjoy talking to my future partner about our plans to have a family,” say, “I am enjoying talking with my partner about plans to have a family.”
- Include a verb ending in -ing. Using verbs ending in -ing gives action to the phrase. If you use present-tense verbs that don’t end in -ing, you’re describing something you do, but it’s unclear how often or consistently you do it. For example, saying “I feel confident and comfortable expressing myself in meetings,” is less active than saying, “I am expressing myself confidently and comfortably in meetings.” (If you use the phrase “I am,” you’ll naturally add a verb ending in -ing.)
- Use positive, rather than negative phrasing. What we say and think often forms images in our mind, so it’s important to use positive phrasing to create positive images. For example, you might say, “ I am loving eating salads with lots of vegetables every day for lunch,” rather than, “I am no longer dreading eating salads for lunch.”
- Write short affirmations. If your affirmations are too long, you risk not remembering them easily. To encourage yourself to write less, pretend you’re writing a jingle for an ad in which each word costs $1,000.
- Write affirmations for yourself. Make your affirmations reflect your actions rather than those of others. For example, saying “I am watching my husband do the dishes,” isn’t as effective as, “I am communicating my needs to my husband.”
- Use the phrase, “or something/someone/somewhere better.” Even though you have a concrete idea of what you want or need, using the phrase “or something/someone/somewhere better” keeps the affirmation open to even better possibilities than you can imagine right now. For example, saying “I am walking each morning along Waikiki Beach or somewhere better,” leaves you open to opportunities that involve walking each morning, but perhaps somewhere even better than Waikiki Beach.
TITLE: The Success Principles
AUTHOR: Jack Canfield
TIME: 90
READS: 118.1
IMG_URL: https://www.shortform.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/the-success-principles-cover.png
BOOK_SUMMARYURL: the-success-principles-summary-jack-canfield
AMZN_ID: XYZ
Pair Affirmations With Visualizations
In addition to reciting affirmations, you can rewire your mind for success by visualizing the person you want to be and recalling your successful memories. According to Maxwell Maltz, the author of Psycho-Cybernetics, each time you create or recall successful feelings, your subconscious records them and imprints them into your self-image. These successful feelings will accumulate in your self-image and will lead to new, automatic responses to your experiences—in other words, you’ll gradually find yourself naturally feeling and acting more successfully.
Maltz recommends setting aside 15-30 minutes a day to visualize and think about what sort of person you would be if you freed yourself from everything that is holding you back—such as your negative self-image, the expectations of others, or specific fears. Come up with different situations and imagine how your “positive and successful self” would react. Make your images as vivid and as detailed as possible.
- For example, if you imagine yourself driving a car, picture yourself sitting in the car relaxed and confident. Notice the small sensory details to make it feel more real—the weight and feel of the steering wheel, the hum of the air-conditioning, the way the upholstery smells, and so on. The most important thing is to feel successful throughout this time.
In addition, Maltz recommends remembering successful experiences from your past—times when you felt satisfied and self-confident. Your subconscious doesn’t know the difference between past, present, or future, so memories of your past successes will impact your subconscious and accumulate alongside all of the successful feelings you create.
TITLE: Psycho-Cybernetics
AUTHOR: Maxwell Maltz
TIME: 58
READS: 139.2
IMG_URL: https://www.shortform.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/pyscho-cybernetics-cover.png
BOOK_SUMMARYURL: psycho-cybernetics-summary-maxwell-maltz
AMZN_ID: XYZ
Final Words
Affirmations are a powerful tool for change. Repeating positive affirmations for success can help you reinforce positive ways of thinking and push through moments of self-doubt. For affirmations to work, use them to affirm beliefs you already hold as opposed to trying to make yourself believe something you don’t agree with.
If you enjoyed our article about positive affirmations for success, check out the following book suggestions for further reading:
The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
In the self-improvement classic The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, Joseph Murphy claims that all of your life experiences are the result of the interaction between your conscious and subconscious minds: Your subconscious mind creates your life experiences according to your habitual conscious thoughts and ingrained beliefs. Murphy argues that you can dramatically improve your life experiences by using your conscious mind to imprint positive thoughts and beliefs upon your subconscious mind.
We are surrounded by people who seem more successful than us and who earn more money than we do. We may think, “What do they have that I haven’t got? Are they just smarter?” In The Magic of Thinking Big, author David J. Schwartz says it’s a matter of mindset. Successful people “think bigger”—they believe in themselves, have a grander scale of imagination, and see bigger possibilities. And they behave accordingly—they have magnetic attitudes, prefer action to waiting, and learn from every setback. Learn the strategies and techniques that successful people use.
Everyone has something they want to either change or improve their life. Maybe it’s a better job. Maybe it’s more security. Maybe it’s love. Changing your life may feel impossible. Where would you even start? With the principles of The Secret, you will learn to use the power of your mind to make what you want a reality. Through practical steps and guidance for how to shift your feelings and behaviors to a stronger, more positive place, you will learn how to harness the Law of Attraction to create a better, happier life.
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