Unfortunately,
a great number of us have the propensity to read self-development books as if
one were reading fiction. Not many put
what they have read and digested into practice.
Of the few who have actually put it into practice, a significant number
give up after getting inspired for a couple of days. And then there are those handful who attempt
to put into practice that which they have read and most people who give up,
give up because it has not worked for them.
Positive
thinking and affirmations have been around for centuries, thus millions and
millions of lives inabshould have been impacted by now, which doesn’t really seem
to be the case. The preponderance of
success stories from the Nirmiti Nidra
workshops is from people who have practiced diligently and implemented what
they have learnt and assimilated. Affirmations
have helped many ordinary people achieve extraordinary results in their lives.
It has turned many ’failures’ into successes. It has created miracles in the
history of human evolution. Yet, the vast majority of people who use
affirmations find that it doesn't work.
Most readers of
this blog are also familiar with affirmation techniques that no one told you
about. The whole point of course, is not
if they have been read, but if they have been implemented. And even as one puts
it into practice, there are reasons why affirmations fail. The popular myth is that all one has to do is
repeat positive statements day in and day out, and sooner or later they would
work. Some wrote their desired outcome
on a card, kept it on their person at all times and repeated the phrase over
and over in their head, with or without a picture poster. Had the expected
outcomes been exactly what was desired, millions of lives would have
transformed. How many do you think have
actually succeeded?
Yet there are
many success stories that abound (quite a few from our workshop
participants too), so there is no doubt that some affirmations do fructify, where
many others fail. With a limited
understanding of the powerful universal intelligence, the force of the
collective intelligence, the inability to operate beyond our span of influence
and control, it is still possible to enumerate why affirmations fail more often
than one thinks. Contrarily there are
times that affirmations do work, and we fail to realize that we have created this
ourselves and take responsibility for it.
The irony is –
1. When it does work, we have not realized how
powerfully our subconscious has created exactly that which we expected or
anticipated.
2. When it doesnt work, we berate ourselves that we
perhaps didnt do it correctly or that we were undeserving or even better, blame
it on fate or destiny.
You already
know from
the previous article as to how you make affirmations work, powerfully yet unwittingly,
unintentionally and unaware. Let us now
look at the reasons why a vast majority of affirmations fail – knowledge of
just these two things GALVANISES your self-development practice.
Inaccesibility
to the Subconscious Mind
One of the
major reasons why positive affirmations often don’t work is because they target
the conscious level
of our mind. This is also one of the
reasons that NLP fails, which we shall discuss in a subsequent article on this blog. The purpose of an affirmation is to pass a
command from the conscious mind to the subconscious mind. It is the
subconscious mind which has the ability, for anything it accepts to be
believable and true, to do whatever it takes to turn the expectation into
reality. Thus, for any practitioner of affirmations, it is important that the
message gets transmitted to the subconscious mind but for the vast majority,
who repeat their affirmations like a mantra within their conscious mind, fail
to get it transmitted to their subconscious mind through their critical filter
of dogmas, beliefs, values and principles.
Core
negative beliefs
A core belief
is something you very strongly believe is true about yourself irrespective of
what anyone else says or thinks about you.
When this core
belief is deep rooted in your subconscious mind, affirmations to the
conscious can hardly help. To know more
about deep rooted core beliefs, you may wish to read this
article elsewhere on this blog. Everyone knows that Jane Fonda was perceived
to be one of the most beautiful women in the world, yet her autobiography
reveals that she judged her physical appearance as inadequate and battled
eating disorders for many years. If the
core negative belief is that you are worthless, useless, fat or ugly, this
belief is true for you irrespective of what the actual reality may be and
irrespective of hundreds of people telling you otherwise. A positive affirmation that clashes with a
deep rooted core belief in your subconscious mind sets off an inner war, a
conflict which uses a great deal of energy but a battle that only your
subconscious mind will win as it fights for survival. What you desire fails to manifest.
Implausible
Destiny
Any affirmation
has to be congruent with the present age on Planet Earth and compatible with
present-day society created by collective desires and intelligence over many
years. If you now affirm that, ”I am a rich
loved king with loyal and faithful subjects’, it may have worked a few
centuries ago, but can it really work in the present age? If your present life on planet earth (for
those who believe in reincarnation) has ’n’ possibilities in line with the
overall purpose for this life experience, can it work if one goes to ’n+1’? Perhaps not, right? Affirmations also have to be believable to
your own mind and yes, most definitely possible even as you repeat it to
yourself. There is a trick that you can
choose (pun intended). For example, if
your body is totally out of shape and you affirm that, ”I am in perfect shape
and very attractive” or if you are penniless (or paiseless) and you affirm
that, ”I am a millionaire” or ”I am earning millions every year”, do you think
your own mind believes them as you recite?
Most likely not. The trick in
such affirmations is to use the words, ”I choose”. Not try saying, ”I choose to be a millionair”
or ”I choose to earn millions each year” or ”I choose to be in perfect shape”
or ”Everything I do is getting me closer to the perfect weight and shape”. Does that make a difference? Indeed it does.
Low
Self-Esteem
Recent research
by scholars has dismissed the utility of self-esteem as well as programs
designed to improve it. I am fully aware
that there are so many ’training programs’ conducted on this subject, but their
efficacy has either not been measured or it has failed to deliver. Self-esteem, to begin with, is not a constant
factor, but can fluctuate every day, or even within a day. It is more like the dollar-versus-rupee in
the financial markets. You ought to
remember that self-esteem is not just the holistic feeling about ourselves but
also how we feel/think about ourselves in specific domains or roles in our
lives (as a parent, employee, boss, child, sibling, etc.). Inevitably, the
greater the importance of a specific role or domain, the greater the impact on
our overall self-esteem. Very high self-esteem,
like in case of narcissists, if also not a good thing, and often quite
brittle. People who are highly
vulnerable to criticism and negative feedback often find that it stunts their
growth. The reason why this topic is
important for this particular article is that positive affirmations make people
with low self-esteem feel worse about themselves, as recent research
suggests. Positive affirmations
appear dramatically contrary to the existing set of beliefs in a given
moment and therefore fail as explained in a couple of paragraphs above. You cannot possibly affirm ”I am a great
success in everything that I do” when you are feeling miserable about
yourself. Here is the trick – change this
affirmation to ”Everything I do is helping me to persevere until I succeed.” Is the allure of self-esteem then
a mirage?
Transience
and Impermanence
You cannot undo
years of thinking and years of ’wrongly’ programming your subconscious mind
overnight. It needs diligence,
perseverance, daily practice and commitment to overwrite what you have previous
written in stone. Even as you must
understand that you get what you expect, not what you want, the only reason so
many people claim that affirmations do not work is because they give up before
the affirmation manifests in their lives.
They have ’tried’ it for a couple of days or for a week. You must diligently practice every single day
for at least a month! And you need to
know, how to
create what you expect and not what you want. Success and self-improvement go hand-in-hand,
but there is no success with transcience, only with unfailing diligent
regularity.
Associating
pain with inevitable action
The best manner
in which this can be explained is through an example. Let us say that your affirmation is related
to wealth or abundance. The inevitable
action in this case is spending. There
will be multiple instances in your life (even as you affirm) that you have to
spend. Now, typically, most people
seeking wealth associate spending with pain.
You know through our workshops that our subconscious mind does
everything in its capacity to increase all those things associated with pleasure
and avoid all those events that cause pain.
Can you imagine the message that you are sending to your subconscious if
each time you spend, causes you pain and grief?
Turn this to your advantage instead by affirmation each time you spend
that ”I always have plenty to spend”.
The workshops
that we conduct arm you with immense information on your subconscious mind, how
to access it and program it for your health and success. Irrespective of whether you become a part of
this unique group or otherwise, there are a few things you must know.
Get out of the
way and let
the practice be the practice.
The Three
Universal Laws of how
your mind processes suggestions.
The Importance
of Negative
Emotions.
Indulging in
interrogative Self-talk is a wonderful alternative. This recent ground-breaking
study sheds light on motivating goal-directed behavior through the
interrogative form of the simple future tense.
Interrogative self-talk is about asking questions and thus, neither
positve or negative. The innate
curiosity built into our subconscious minds propel it to probe for answers to
powerful questions. For a situation
which states ”I am terrible at presentations”, you have the choice to indulge
in positive affirmations like ”I am delivering a great presentation” or indulge
in interrogative self-talk like ”What can I do to make my presentations really
interesting?”.
