Positive Thinking
and Affirmations are quite popular off late, but there is very little
statistical information in the public domain as to how effective they have
been. Stay in touch with this blog for a
series of articles on affirmations and how and why they dont work for a larger
number of people.
If you take the time
to browse what several psychologists have to say including various
organizations and associations, right uptil what are known as Third Wave
Psychologists, you will find that are unanimous in the conclusion that random
affirmations do not always work for you.
Self-esteeem plays a very important role and whereas positive
affirmations can benefit those with high self-esteem, it could even be counter
productive in case of people with low self-esteem.
Ideally, a coach or
therapist would focus on acceptance and commitment clarifying your values and
committing your behavior to them. At a time when more and more people are
looking for answers outside the traditional medical model, there is no doubt
that there is an overdose of information that is available to the people at
large and most of it is superficial. Third
Wave Psychologists agree that affirmations work best when they are congruent
and concomitant with other interventions like Life Coaching, Hypnosis, NLP,
etc., which help bring about an alignment of behavior and values. Ancient Indian and Buddhist approaches are
validated now by reinforcing the concept of acceptance of negative thoughts and
emotions which are born out of past and present actions and behavior before
attempting to override them.
Whatever you resist, persists
– Carl Jung
Whatever you fight, strengthens
– Eckhart Tolle
The first step to change, is awareness. The second is acceptance
– Nathaniel Branden
The reason for
writing all of the above is to ensure that readers are not misled into
believing that random positive thinking will create miraculous results. Most people would have tried it and quite
often given up. It is abundantly clear
that awareness, mindfulness and acceptance play a significant role before
affirmations can create transformation.
At the same time, I
must also add that a
remarkable study conducted in 2002 found that 80% of the people tested who
took the six most popular antidepressants of the 1990's got the same results
when they took a sugar pill placebo. 80%!
Your subconscious
mind is incredibly powerful! Far more than you can imagine it to be. Awareness, mindfulness, acceptance and
effective affirmations are possible only when you are able to connect with your
subconscious mind. Thus I go around imparting
the Nirmiti Nidra technique
to people across diverse sections of the society. The program is offered free to all schools and institutes so that the youth can derive an
early advantage. In the workshop,
participants are also taught to formulate affirmations for themselves. It is extremely important that affirmations
are formulated by you personally, because the same words can mean different
things to different people. The 12 laws
of the subconscious mind are also explained to the participants with
examples.
Mere thought
conditioning will not suffice, behavioural conditioning is equally important. You
can read more about this here,
the article also briefly touches upon why affirmations fail. Stay tuned to this blog or our facebook page so you do not
miss out on future posts. Over the next few weeks, a series of articles will
provide you with positive affirmations that you can use for inspiration. Do not use them as is, but use them as
inspiration to formulate your own which are intricately aligned with your own
values, objectives and goals after becoming aware of the challenges you face by
way of negative thoughts and behaviour.
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