Positive Affirmations

Imagine waking up every day and being able to direct the powers of your mind towards success, happiness and achievement.  Anyone can do this! You have to want to “step outside the box”, stretch your limited mind and change the way you think!  One tool that will help you to do this successfully is learning the techniques of positive affirmations.  This is a way to create a new and positive life and incredibly, it is free!

What is a positive affirmation? It is a word or phrase that evokes a positive state in a person. It is creating positive thoughts to improve the circumstances of your life.  With affirmations, you state your intentions and desires. Sometimes people think of positive affirmations as Mantras. But mantras are different. Mantra is a religious or mystical poem originating from the Sanskrit language.  Mantra comes from the Sanskrit root “man” meaning to think and “tra” meaning to liberate. Put together, it literally means to liberate from thought. A mantra is said as a chant to empty the mind of thought.  On the other hand, positive affirmations want to put the mind to use!

Positive Affirmations became popular in the 1930′s with Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich.  Further writings were in 1962, when Catherine Ponder authored The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity which outlined a universal set of laws to govern happiness and prosperity.  Law of Command, one of the laws, states that it is our divine right to command and affirm our value and worth.  This is done through verbal “commands” each and every day.

The act of affirming your value and worth has a profound effect on your body chemistry. You can actually train your mind to be positive. The study of neuro biology confirms that the wiring or grouping of certain brain cells can have an impact on our behavior.  Grouping of like brain cells activate our learned behavior.  For example, singing, talking, clapping and running are all learned behavior that relies on the firing of certain brain cells. 

Before we are born, your brain develops the ability to wire brain circuits so your body will be able to pump blood, breathe, swallow and make use of the senses. Our body uses its senses to collect data and react to it. Does this smell good? Is the burner hot? This data is collected and sent to the subconscious mind.  This is where positive affirmations come into play.  If data is sent to the subconscious mind that is wrong or incorrect, then our mind must step in to correct the situation.

For example, as a child you learn to love ice cream. Your grandfather always bought you an ice cream cone at the fair and you associate great, warm, memories of eating that ice cream cone. As an adult, you still want to eat that ice cream cone but realize that it is probably not healthy and will make you gain weight. You reprogram your brain to not crave that ice cream cone. You tell yourself that it is not good for you and reprogram the data that goes to your subconscious mind.

This is a positive affirmation at work! The mind is a very powerful tool. We see many examples of this everyday from sugar cravings to even the repeat cycle of abuse.  As a child, the data sent to the subconscious mind was that the actions of the adult were okay because they were an adult. It takes placing new data in the brain to change the behavior.

How do you place this new data in the brain? There are many techniques to positive affirmations. Affirmations should be positive words that are repeated, stating your intentions and desires.  They should evoke positive mental images and should affirm in the present tense not the future tense.

Some examples are:

  • I am healthy and happy!
  • I am in good health.
  • I am making work satisfying and enjoyable.
  • I am achieving my full potential.
  • I am successfully losing weight.

Have fun with this. Repeat the affirmations often and with fervor.  These thoughts will help improve the circumstances of your life.

As Dr. Joyce Brothers stated “Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as successful”.

Not only start thinking of yourself as a success but positively affirm this thought and send your subconscious mind this message. This will enhance your personal power to connect to the universe.