The Power of Positive Affirmation

Unless you have been living under a rock, you have no doubt heard about the power of positive thinking. Norman Vincent Peale first wrote about the subject in 1952. His book, The Power of Positive Thinking was written with the sole objective of helping the reader achieve a happy, satisfying, and worthwhile life through the power of faith in action, starting with positive thoughts. I think he was onto something! Sign me up!

I believe our thoughts create our reality. If you are spending hours every day thinking about how much you hate your job, dislike your spouse, resent your circumstances and bemoan your lack, you will receive more of what you focus your attention upon. When we complain, we solidify our misery. When we speak or think about our circumstances in anger, frustration or resentment, we embolden our negativity to grow stronger. It doesn’t take much to create a downward spiral of doom and gloom.

I do believe that negative emotions have an important place in our lives. We cannot gloss over the bad days with a fake smile. We should not ignore grief nor deny our anger. These emotions, while considered negative, are powerful instruments of change and growth, helping us define our boundaries and tolerance levels. However, these emotions cannot take up long-term residence in our hearts and in our lives. So how can we best move negative emotions along?

It is important to remember that the words we use matter.

Louise Hay, the master of positive affirmation describes it best:

 “All of our self-talk, our internal dialogue, is a stream of affirmations. You're using affirmations every moment whether you know it or not. You're affirming and creating your life experiences with every word and thought. Your beliefs are merely habitual thinking patterns that you learned as a child. Many of them work very well for you. Other beliefs may be limiting your ability to create the very things you say you want. What you want and what you believe you deserve may be very different. You need to pay attention to your thoughts so that you can begin to eliminate the ones creating experiences you do not want in your life.”

She goes on to reiterate that every complaint is an affirmation of something you do not want, anger affirms you want more to be angry about, and playing the victim in your life affirms you want to continue to feel like a victim.

Doesn’t sound like much fun, does it?

This was recently hammered home to me. Within the past few weeks, I have had some financial upheavals that took me by surprise. I worried, I feared, I raged at my circumstances until my own words came back to haunt me: You cannot be in fear and faith at the same time. I had left trust and faith behind in a flurry of fear and anger. It was time to refocus on my core belief system, and that most certainly is not to wallow in negativity. While positive thought may not change my circumstances quickly, it certainly changed my outlook immediately.

Let’s talk about manifesting good things into our lives using positive affirmation rather than affirming more of what we do not want.

After acknowledging and taking responsibility for the things in our lives we would prefer to change, improve or release, state what you desire to bring into your life in positive terms.

Think about your positive affirmation as planting a seed in fertile ground. It won’t grow very well if you state your affirmation and then quickly follow it with doubts. And it won’t grow if you plant the seed and promptly forget about it. It does take some effort on your part to feed and nurture your desires.

It is important that you state your affirmation in present tense, not someday I Will Be but today, and using words such as I Am rather than I Want/Need. Feel how your thoughts and your body respond to statements such as My Life is Abundant, and I Am Prosperous rather than simply stating I Need More Money. Play with it. You will know when you have it right.

Stating your affirmation is only part of the process. Write it down. Put it on a post-it note in a prominent place where you see it often. No law says you can’t put post-it notes all over if it helps reinforce the sentiment. State your affirmation to yourself in the mirror. This is a powerful way to affirm your desires.

I had a teacher once who said that you should live your life “as if.” Live as if your affirmations are already true. Believe it is possible because it is.

Don’t get carried away with the how or when part of your affirmation. In my experience, when I tried to control the results of how and when I wanted my desires to manifest, my affirmation felt more like a demand and obviously that never went very far. It is fun to imagine what your life will look like when your affirmations become a reality, but it’s even more fun to be surprised and delighted when you receive something beyond your wildest dreams. Be open to possibility and allow it to come to you.

Although we insist on making things unnecessarily difficult, it really is quite simple to bring about positive changes in our lives:

               Watch your words, to yourself and others.

               Remember trust and faith can make anything possible.

               Create positive affirmations for what you desire in your life.

               Accept that you deserve the life of your dreams. Starting now. Repeat after me:

“My positive thoughts create my loving, joyful and abundant life!”