Positive Affirmations: What They Are And Why We Do Them

For many years, I just could not wrap my mind around the idea of affirmations. Why would I sit there saying things that I knew for a fact weren’t true? How stupid did they think I was? Or how delusional? It seemed that the process of saying affirmations was just a way to lie to yourself or, worse, to make yourself happy with a situation that wasn’t to your liking.

Brainwashing or some kind of indoctrination, that’s how it struck me. I prided myself on seeing things as they were and my philosophy was, If my life has to be something I don’t like and don’t enjoy, at least I want to have the presence of mind to know it. It never seemed to me that affirmations would change anything, just that they would somehow seduce me into not noticing that I wasn’t getting anything I wanted, and make me happy with a life that wasn’t at all a match to my desires.

I may be the only person with this misconception about affirmations. Or maybe not. How awkward or ridiculous does it seem to say out loud, “I am so grateful now that I am living a life of abundance”, when the bills are stacked knee deep and you’ve just been fired? Or “I am so grateful now that I am healthy and happy” when you are so depressed you feel you may not make it through another day? It’s a stretch for sure. And this is because our minds insist that the reality we see all around us is the only reality possible - that we can’t alter things just by saying so.

Read that last sentence again. Do you agree with that? Does it seem like reality? Don’t we focus on what is to such an extent that it’s hard to reprogram ourselves with thoughts of wealth and happiness that don’t yet exist?

We’re Doing It Already

But look at this: we can easily think thoughts of things that don’t exist. We do it all the time. They seem real, as real as what is actually going on.

This is called worry. Fear. Anxiety.

Somehow this seems more “realistic” than affirmations.

If I look around me right now, what do I see? I see a beautiful house (half painted!), gardens just coming up (it’s April), my wonderful husband outside digging, the dog playing there with him, a car that I like in the driveway, there is some money in the bank, I have a job I enjoy and believe in, I’ve found a healing modality that is addressing some long term problems, there are flowers and books filling the room, there is a cup of coffee on my desk. This is the present moment, as it exists right now.

Why is it so easy to slip into thoughts like: I’ve tried healing methods before and they all work at the beginning and then stop;, I hope nothing unexpected happens, we don’t have a huge financial reserve; we are never going to finish painting this house with all the other things we have to do; I hope my husband can keep feeling well because it’s really threatening to me when he doesn’t…

These are all thoughts about things that aren’t happening. They are speculations about the future based only on ideas that I have in my head. Why does this seem “realistic” and reasonable, compared to this: I’ve found a great healing method and I will feel better and better very quickly; we are making money and enjoying it in a way that’s not happened before so we will find ourselves with more and more abundance; the future looks safe and happy;, the house painting will go smoothly now that we have experience; Tim is really healthy…

Both of these examples are equally based on what’s happening now and on my own thoughts about the future. The “negative” one seems more real because we are so programmed to look for the bad. There are lots of reasons why this is so, many volumes could be written about what this means, but what is important for us here is to see that neither one is real right now. They are both mental projections, templates that I create with my thoughts that then create the future.

This is what I didn’t see in the old days when I couldn’t comprehend what affirmations were all about: I was already doing it. We all do it, all the time. Every time we speculate or anticipate the future, we are making a pattern for that future that will eventually be realized in our actual lives.

Now obviously each stray thought doesn’t automatically come true, which is a good thing! It’s the repeated thoughts, and the thoughts with lots of feeling behind them, that we have to look at.

The Power is in the Present

The present moment is always where our power is. Right now, right here, is the only place we have to stand. We can’t create from twenty years ago, or five, or last week, or yesterday. We can only create from right now. That power is available to everyone, in every “now”. We have only to decide how we are going to use it.

Louise Hay, in You Can Heal Your Life, gives an analogy of planting a seed to grow a tomato plant. When it first sprouts, you don’t look at it and say, that’s not a tomato! and stomp on it. “Rather, you look at it and say, ‘Oh boy, here it comes’…It is the same with creating a new experience for yourself. The soil you plant in is your subconscious mind. The seed is the new affirmation. The whole experience is in this tiny seed.”

This is a happy way to look at affirmations, one that we can really relate to. We all accept without second thought that an acorn will become an oak, a sunflower seed will become a sunflower, a corn seed will become a corn plant. We don’t look at the seed and say, “I’ve got to be out of my mind.” We plant it and know that it contains within it all that is necessary for the full and complete growth of the plant whose seed it is. If we look at affirmations this way, it’s less threatening to our rational minds. It feels less like we are deluding ourselves.

Affirmations should be spoken in the present tense. After all, there is only now. Now is where we live. We can’t live in anything but the present.

Though we speak of those who “live in the past”, all they really do is import memories and artifacts into their present moment to give it a particular cast or flavor. If I am stuck in the moment of a past tragedy, I am not really reliving that one singular moment over and over. I am living first the moment of its initial happening, and then I am living in the moment of recalling it, and then in the next moment of recalling it yet again. I can’t go to the past. There is no past, only now.

You might say, but my now is the way it is because of what happened in the past.

And in a sense you’d be right. But it’s not the events that happened that determine your now, it’s whether you are bringing them along with you into all the succeeding nows.

Design the Life That You Want—and Claim It

Positive affirmations allow us to design the future. We can bring to our conscious awareness all the large and small things that we desire to express, and then plant the seed of that reality in the soil of the present so that when it grows, the new present moment will be more to our liking. Affirmations should be stated in the present so that they become present reality. If we say “I will be rich” that is a statement about the future. But we never get to the future, it’s always just ahead. When we get there, it has become the present. If we state our desires in the future tense, we never catch up to them.

It’s like closing our eyes and saying, “Everything I want is in the next room”. But every room we go into, becomes THIS room. We are never actually in the next room. By saying, “Everything I want is in the room I am in now”, then wherever we are, that’s where it all will be.

So think of affirmations as templates or patterns or seeds. They are designs that you make about your future. Programs that you want your life to run. You are installing ideas in your subconcious mind that will be used to design your life. They will change the way you act, react, feel and think. Did you know that every thought and emotion triggers an actual biological response? Our bodies change with our thoughts. Our very selves, physical, mental and spiritual, are formed by the vibrational patterns that we create with the thoughts and emotions that we generate.

Masuru Emoto, the man who has done the phenomenal work with water crystals, even suggests phrasing the thoughts in the past tense. An example he gives is wanting to become Secretary General of the United Nations. He suggests phrasing this as: I am so happy that I became Secretary General of the United Nations. Using this technique tells your subconscious mind that you have already achieved your desire, making it all the easier to bring it into present reality.

The Actual Process

Formulate a statement that expresses what you desire to be; put it in the present tense; preface it with a statement of your gratitude that you have it.

I am so grateful now that I am prosperous and wealthy.

I am so grateful now that I am healthy and strong.

I am so happy that I am loved and valued in my relationships.

I am so grateful that I am a powerful creator of my own experience, and I create only good for myself.

Write them down. Say them out loud. Just running them through your mind doesn’t formulate them in the solid kind of way that makes them most effective. We tend to think of them then as “just another thought” and they get mixed in with all the other thoughts. We’re trying to generate power by doing this, energizing the pattern so that we attract the actions, inspirations and ideas that will let us bring it into being. So we need to give it the attention that something this important deserves.

Writing it down feels significant. We don’t write trivia down. We write down what we want to remember, what we intend to do, what we really mean. If we write something down it gives a message to all levels of our self that we are serious.

The same applies to speaking it aloud. It gets the thought out into material reality, which makes it easier to real-ize in our physical reality.

Repetition. If what we desire is far from what we have, we have done a lot of repeating of the “bad” stuff in the past. Until we learn the new words “by heart” we have to counteract that old program by repeating the new one.

The Incremental Approach

If what you desire is so far away from what you see around you that there is no way you can conceive of a positive affirmation (even with this understanding of what they are), there are incremental ways to deal with it. Both Abraham and Louise Hay suggest a series of steps to take in your process of creating positive statements that lead you through the tangles of ‘evidence’ that is so convincing to you right now.

Here is an example.

If you are ill and desire to be well, but can’t see how that will ever happen, you can start with ideas like this.

I am willing to let go of the need for this condition.

I am willing to release my energy from this condition.

I am happy that I am looking at alternatives to what I have now.

I have been healthy in the past and so my body knows how to do this.

If I take small steps I can make improvements.

As you gain confidence you can work up to more definite statements that express your true desire:

My body knows how to be healthy.

Conditions change all the time.

I know that the universe contains infinite energy that I can use for healing.

I am happy that I have the desire to do this; desire contains within it all that’s necessary for manifestation.

I am happy that I am a healthy person.

You can apply this kind of process to any situation. And you will see that you can incrementally feel better and better, until you are able to embody the energy of whatever it is you desire. When you do that, the manifestation appears.

It’s Easier to Create a Positive Life

The happy news is that it's easier to create a joyful, expansive reality than a negative, restrictive reality. This might not seem the case when you first hear the idea. But when I look at my own life, it is NOTHING compared to the scenes of mayhem, disaster and tragedy that have gone through my mind in the past, on a regular basis.

If all my negative fears, thoughts and beliefs had come true, I’d be a poster child for every rescue organization in the world and you’d be reading about me in national magazines! But I’m not. Despite many years of massively negative programming, I have a pretty ordinary life, some tragedies, like everyone else, some tough times, major issues and so on. But nothing like what I envisioned all those years.

The good stuff is easier to get. The nature of the universe is well-being. Abraham says there is only well-being and we have the choice to flow with it or resist it. All the bad stuff that happens comes from our resisting the flow of well-being.

So don’t think that it will take long to create your new happy life. Changes happen quickly, the universe responds with enthusiastic love to the least of our efforts to engage it.

By Margie Waters