Affirmations: Guidance To Reach Deeper With Your Practice
Using affirmations is considered to be an effective tool of changing negative imprints in the subconscious mind because if you get into the habit of saying or thinking certain sentences repeteadly like “I deserve happiness.” “I am (always) enough.” “I am able to solve my challenges” and so on, then after a period of time your subconscious is likely to absorb them as truths and your old inner attitude gets updated with the new information.
This is true for sure, at the same time, the success of the simple practice above can depend on some factors which take us into deeper, wider and richer realms of use:
1. The uniqueness of you as a human being and how deeply you were affected by your life experiences so far, that is, how many emotional patterns you have “collected” in certain fields like human relationships, career et cetera.
What works for one person, may not work for the other. So, it is a good idea first to feel deeply into what you really need, whether you are called to repeat positive statements at all, whether they do really empower you or you might prefer some other modalities of reinforcing new ways of relating to yourself and to the world.
2. Do you feel the meaning of the affirmation that you have chosen to use in your heart? Does it resonate with you or not? What feels true for you? Do you feel resistance about certain words or sentences? If you resist anything, then are you open to explore your inner world to get to know yourself more?
A gentle self-awareness and self-inquiry combined with taking some long, slow, deep conscious breaths can prepare and fine-tune your practice as well as make space inside of you for introducing a new frame of mind.
3. Each of us take in alot of data every single moment through our senses, but the conscious mind grasps only a small portion of these.
Feelings and emotions are the territory of your subconscious mind, which has been conditioned through each and every life experience you have had from the time you were in your mother’s womb up to this day.
Moreover, it is not about what has happened to you, rather how you have automatically interpreted those experiences, what meanings have you derived from them on the emotional level from moment to moment. Those imprinted meanings form beliefs that dictate your actions, reactions and how you see yourself, others and the world.
Hidden beliefs, the ones you are unaware of, might hinder the integration of a new approach, however, by turning your attention deeply inwards you can learn to recognize them, which is the first step to be able to make a choice to change them.
4. Your Attitude, how you relate to the use of an affirmation matters alot. When you keep repeating a sentence like „I am worthy and loveable” or you meditate on it and you have even just the slightest wish to use it to suppress, avoid, resist, deny, or get rid of a negative thought or emotion that keeps popping up in you, then it surely backfires. So, it is essential to become aware of your thoughts and feelings non-judgementally beforehand. That is simply noticing any experience you have in silence, paying attention to your inner world without pushing to change anything about it. Embracing even the resistance you might feel in your loving awareness when observing your inner unfolding. Just be conscious of what is going on in you, that’s it. When you refrain from labelling yourself or your experience, you already step into self-love, self-acceptance naturally and this is the biggest gift from you to you, which is also a prerequisite to actually changing anything. When You show respect and appreciation to who you are in this very moment, you suddenly stop striving to reach some ideal. It is relaxing as you stop fighting with or trying to win over yourself which actually require a great deal of energy and most often prove to be futile in the long run. By releasing any (self-imposed) demands you avoid falling into the trap of toxic positivity.
5. From the solid foundation of listening to yourself objectively can start the intention to gently move and gradually shift in the direction of embracing new perspectives. Practice and patience are keys.
6. Affirmations can be used in a wide variety of ways and settings including everyday situations when they rather have to do with acknowledging and learning to accurately describe your needs and feelings to replace any long-held negative conviction. An example: you may notice a so-called negative thought or belief which manifests itself as negative self-talk, a sentence that you either think repeatedly or even say in front of other people at times. Such can be the statement „I am lazy” whenever you don’t feel like doing something. This is likely to come from an earlier period of your life when an authority figure like a teacher, a guru or someone whom you respected or admired told you maybe once or multiple times „You are lazy.” While the other person could have merely invalidated your natural needs for rest or your inability to hold time, space and energy for a task at hand in a particular situation, depending on the circumstances, this negative statement might have touched you emotionally and sunk into your subconscious internalized as a conviction because you automatically took up the opinion of that person as truth about you, even if it was not. Catching yourself whenever you say (usually think) „I am lazy.”, you can gently and objectively acknowledge the surfacing of this sentence as well as the underlying feelings without fighting, denying or suppressing them, and then start reframing like this: „I like helping others, at the same time, I don’t feel like doing this now.” „I honour my need to relax now.” „I prefer doing X to Y”. etc. Create your affirmation so that it is not too long , still, it describes your needs and feelings accurately in the present moment.
It is not necessarily about swapping a negative belief with its positive counterpart, which in this case would be „I am diligent.”
You can alternate more affirmations tailored to different types of situations to replace the utterance „ I am lazy” whenever it crops up. Experiment, be creative, discover what works best for you.
After some time you will notice that you no longer speak negatively about yourself and already the first time when you replace the negative with the positive you might feel slightly different. You choose to be kind towards yourself without invalidating or pushing down any inner critic aspect of you.
This is a kind of self-regulation, when you can navigate and manage your inner states and processes consciously switching from being anxious, ashamed etc. to an all-encompassing level of calmness in any situation through your awareness and the language you use which both serve as resources for you in every moment.
7. Affirmations can take the form of a question, too. You can turn negative questions that come up for you into positive ones like when you tend to ask yourself „Why do I always make these things wrong?”, you can say one or more of the following: „How and what can I learn from this?” „How have things turned that way? What can I do differently next time?” „(How) Can I find a way to see these things differently?” “What other choices can I have?” “I wonder if there is a way to make things right.” etc.
You have plenty of possibilities here, what is important is to stay objective and leave negative self-judgement, self-blame completely behind.
Thus you step into your Response-Ability and Creativity, realizing your infinite inner power to lead your own life, as the positive, (or at least emotionally neutral) questions you give yourself will ease up your mind and turn you towards solutions by invoking a contemplative mode instead of getting more stuck in an ongoing circle of stress.
8. Stay flexible in your practice. Notice gently whenever you get into struggling, pushing and pulling yourself.
Stop, find your center in Being by watching your inner tendencies dispassionately. Listen to your intuition, keep revising what suits you the best. As you can see, affirmations can be used not only when you set up time for meditation or contemplation but also in your day-to-day life.
9. Using the pronoun „I” might not work each time to replace an old belief with a new one. You may need to tell or think to yourself lovingly : „You are loveable.” using the pronoun „You” instead of „I” as your subconscious takes this as if it was an appreciation coming from another person and this way the dimension of healing is extended into a kind of (pseudo)-co-regulation. *
In inner child work (which deserves a separate blog post) affirmations are used in the latter way with the pronoun „You”.
10. Hugging yourself, putting your hand on your Heart, looking into your eyes in the mirror can strengthen the meaning of the affirmation and its absorption through involving more of your senses.
11. Explore with curiosity and embrace what feels right for you, there are no preset rules to follow. Let your Heart lead you!
* (Note: Co-regulation is for example when you feel anxious and you call a friend who helps you soothe by being there for you, listening, expressing their empathy, appreciation, so there is another person (Being) who support your system to return into balance from various, at times extreme emotional states. A pet can also serve as a companion in co-regulation.)
