‘Accentuating’ the positive is vital if you want to ‘attract the positive’. I have blogged about this in the past but I think it’s useful to be reminded, from time to time, of how powerful our mind is.
What are you ‘accentuating’ or ‘affirming’?
Some people say, “I don’t believe in affirmations” or “affirmations don’t last”.
Actually that’s not true. We are in fact affirming things about ourselves all of the time. Unfortunately most of the time what we’re affirming is negative, and goes on at an unconscious level.
It starts something like this ….
1. Our conscious mind says, “I want to give up smoking”
Our inner mind answers back –
“You’ve got no will power, you can’t give up smoking. Life’s too stressful to ‘give up’, what will you do to calm you down? Everyone knows it’s really difficult to give up; anyway you’ve got to have some ‘vice’. Imagine how unbearable it’ll be being around other smokers, you won’t fit in; they’ll keep offering you cigarettes. It’s the only way you get a ‘break’ you need to be able to ‘escape’ from things, people, besides if you give up smoking you’ll eat more and being ‘fat’ will be much worse. Just accept the fact you’re a smoker: everyone’s got a die of something, you might as well die happy.”
2. Our conscious mind says, “I’m going to lose weight”
Our inner mind says,
“No you aren’t. Remember what happened last time? You know you can’t lose weight and keep it off, it’s too hard, and even if you do, you won’t be able to relax. It’ll be a struggle, besides your overweight friends won’t like it, and so and so will think you’re ‘superficial’ and ‘shallow’. You’ll have to give up eating the things you love: you know how much you hate being ‘deprived’, and what if you succeed and you’re still not happy? Much better not to bother”.
3. Our conscious mind says, “I want to be in a wonderful relationship“.
Our inner mind says,
“Oh come on, you’ll never meet the ‘right’ partner and even if you do it won’t last, look what happened with the last boyfriend. Remember how miserable you were when you broke up? You were devastated! There’s no such thing as ‘Mr. Right’ anyway, I mean how many people do you know who are in a great relationship? And quite frankly those people that are, are better than you. They’ve got more money, they’re smarter, more attractive ……”
Does any of that sound familiar? We all have our own ‘version’ of course, but you can see the kind of thing that can get in the way of making any changes and having what we want!
But, as I said, that’s just the start. Beneath the constant ‘chatter’ is something much more subtle, but very powerful indeed.
It’s so subtle in fact, that it’s very unlikely you’ll even uncover it unless you become curious about doing so!
Curiosity might take the form of feeling like ‘something is missing’ in life and wondering why that is. Or beginning to spot that there are ‘patterns’ emerging in certain areas of your life, Relationships, Health & wellbeing, Money or Career perhaps.
You may notice that …..
you keep attracting partners who display similar behaviour
you always get back problems when you go through a difficult patch emotionally
you can’t hang on to money. Every time you think you don’t have a ‘money issue’ something happens and you are ‘broke’ again (even if you just won the lottery!)
you can never manage to earn above a certain amount of income, no matter what you do.
You realize that you’ve stayed in a job you don’t enjoy, for years and years, even though part of you thinks or longs to be doing something else.
So why would you do that?
Because deep down there is a belief that you can’t have or do the things you want. These beliefs are called ‘limiting’ beliefs because they literally ‘limit’ you in some way.
Beliefs like:
- I’m not good enough
- I’m not lovable
- I’m not worthy
- I don’t deserve to be happy
If a part of you truly believes you ‘don’t deserve to be happy’ that part of you will literally look for evidence to prove that the belief is true, and anytime you start to ‘be happy’ it will try and sabotage your happiness.
Say for instance, you want to give up smoking but part of you believes you don’t have any ‘will power’. That belief ‘I don’t have any will power’ will dictate your ability to succeed.
You may decide you can’t stop smoking because you ‘lack the will power’ (which will be based on other times in your life when you weren’t able to succeed at something). You may decide not to even attempt giving up, for fear of failing. The belief will literally sabotage your plans to give up.
This belief will have almost certainly come about as a result of something that happened in the past. Maybe someone told you, you didn’t have the ‘will power’ and you believed them, or you failed to achieve something and your inner mind decided that you were a ‘failure’ or that ‘it’s really hard to succeed’. Then this belief got in the way of you achieving more things. “I’m a failure” or “I can’t succeed” became a self-fulfilling prophecy. After a while you stopped bothering because it was too uncomfortable to deal with the disappointment of not having what you wanted.
So if you made a decision like that when you were age 6 and you are still doing what your inner mind wants you to do, consider the fact that you may have a 6 year old running your life!
With this in mind, is it any wonder that positive affirmations will either not work, or work temporarily. After all how can they work if your inner mind is saying something that’s contradictory!
I invite you to take a moment now to look at your life and see where you might have given up on yourself and your dreams…..
- Are you still smoking?
- Have you lost weight?
- Are you in a great relationship?
- Is your job fulfilling?
- Are you as happy as you could be?
- Is life abundant for you? Rewarding? Joyful? An adventure?
- Have you given up on something?
- Are you realizing your dreams?
The great thing about discovering your ‘limiting beliefs’ is that you can then work with them. That’s right we need to work with our inner mind, not ignore it or fight it. We need to acknowledge what’s going on at an unconscious level so that we can transform it.
The wonderful thing is that the moment we acknowledge a negative affirmation or ‘limiting belief’ we can turn it in to a positive one. That way we can get a different result! Phew!
EFT is a fantastic technique for letting go of a ‘limiting belief’ because it gives the part of you that is ‘stuck’ (or limited) a voice, (which is exactly what it wants!) Once we voice what’s ‘really going on’ internally, we can work with it and reclaim our power.
So, instead of ignoring this belief or pretending it isn’t there, listen to it and acknowledge it. Sometimes that in itself will have it temporarily disappear.
Hopefully by now, it will be clear that there is a direct link between your affirmations and confidence. Remember to affirm something positive!
Do leave a comment, I’d love to know what you’re affirming.
Speak soon!