★Affirmations a 1000 times a day???

Hi ALL

When i was first introduced to affirmations, it was via an online coach who told me that we think over 60,000 thoughts a day and therefore should repeat an affirmation or many affirmations atleast 1000 times a day for each atleast.

So I was repeating 5-10 affirmations a day continuously in my head. I would wake up and sleep thinking these affirmations and all day long.

The only time i wouldnt be able to would be when im talking or if i was reading or writing or typing, but on ALL other occasions i was saying them like a computer, literally

I do remember that even whilst saying them worries and concerns about other goals and doubts or fears would always come up, basically i was aware of an anxious feeling inside but not due to the affirmation so much as due to the doubt of whether i need even more affirmations etc

Anyway after 3 months, yes 90 days I stopped, nothing within in had changed at all

Since then i became more interested in learning how to visualise and came across affirmations again, but different now. These sources all said to say them not when your awake but when youre in your relaxed state when you are visualising.

They all said to visualise then to repeat your affirmations 10-20times with as much feeling as possible.

Then other sources mention saying affirmations not in a relaxed state but during the day, only thing is to say them a FEW times or even once but with feelings again.

None of them say to say the affirmation 1000times a day without feeling (because i realised that saying them 1000 times a day and to have feeling is virtually impossible..i was told to just say them in a parrot fashion, kinda like the way abraham hicks i believe advocate, when they say a belief is just something you have repeated etc)

Now I have come across other sources that say write your affirmation down, attach a date to it, and then carry this in your pocket and whenever you read it, imagine the feeling etc However its the addition of the date that as now comfused me, because I feel as if this is now telling the subconsious when to complete the goal, but ive read that this way the subconscious will wait until that date not bring it to fruition sooner

All of this has really confused me, as to what works. I was thinking that yes getting into a relaxed state, by-passing the conscious mind and repeating the affirmations with feelings every single day is the way, but now all this consious (in the day time) affirming seems to go against this logic

what works?

thanks you

hi james ,i think its like most things ,some ways work best for some folks .
Im an up and down affirmer ,i have days where i love writing maybe 4 affirmations down about 20 times ,or i wil listen to a louise hay c d on the train ,other days i will catch myself repeating negative affirmations a lot and change them to positive – Im so tired -to – my energy is always increasing .Then there are the days i completely forget but im o k with that

I have reached a lovely stage where im o k with myself most of the time and aim for having a go at things ,in the past if i did not do it right /perfect straight away i gave up and that only hurt my self esteem .

Play around and see what feels right for you ,be patient with yourself and believe they work ,because they do in one way or another .
love flowergirl

Hi Flowergirl

Yes the writing the affirmations daily 20times is what im definately going or wanting to start. I think focusing on 1 affirmations rather than 10 or 20 is better, what do you think?

I have written 20 affirmations for my first goal and heard that this should be taped onto a casette/mp3 and listened daily, but why, because isnt it better to get into a relaxed state and impress the affirmations whether 1 or 20 into the subconscious that way?

Thank you :)

Don’t feel you need to be in a particular state for the affirmations to be effective. There will always be something in the way, if you allow it. A sore back, sleepiness, a headache, a mellow or depressive disposition.

Take care of yourself, make sure you are exercising enough, eating properly and getting enough sleep, but otherwise get on with it. Advice I need to remind myself of time and time again.

Affirmations are useful to remind yourself of your priorities when you are discouraged. They are a great way to get yourself back on the bandwagon when you’re indulging.

There is no one particular method of using affirmations that will magically improve your circumstances or cure your ills, but they are a great tool that can help you along in all kinds of ways.

It takes a lot of reprogramming to change negative thinking patterns. You can do a lot of it with passive listening to audio cd’s of your affirmations. Passive listening can be very helpful because your affirmations aren’t resisted by the conscious mind.

In my own opinion affirmation is not a magic wand. But it is a powerful tool to create a great living! You must not expect an overnight success in the practice of affirmation.
Let us assume that in twenty of your best years of life you have been consistently expressing in negativity and then you are introduced to affirmation practice. You will easily realize that ninety days application of affirmation will only begin to introduce new set of thoughts in your thinking pattern. It is just a period of inauguration. The process of change just begun. And if you persevere there in for long enough you will reap the rewards.
The whole essence of affirmation is to create in you a pattern of thinking process that supports your desires or goals, keeping you more focused on what you want by helping you express positive energy in a more consistent manner. This takes practice to accomplish. And time too. Sometimes it takes a long,long time.
The point is that patience and perseverance are a duty here. Perhaps faith too.
So keep on keeping on brother! You will reach port. Eventually. Provided you are steadfast.
Best of regards.

When I began to build my list of affirmations on my bmindful profile I was lead by what my focus was at that moment. Once I’ve said it , written it beleived it , it’s done. If the problem returns I will go back to the affirmations and repeat them in my thoughts. If faced with a sudden difficulty , at work for example , I will just come with an affirmation on the spot.

I believe I have the man in my life that I wanted to have in my life due to affirmations. Every time I saw him I guided him to me. When we were apart I envisioned us together.

ETC.

Just after my recent reply I went to my affirmations and decided that I will print them out and organize them , then I can more easily access them at the time I need them :)

I guess an affirmation, when repeated enough times is kind of like wearing a groove in something. If you think or say something enough times it becomes an almost automatic thought. Kind of like homeostasis. I don’t know what is optimal and apparently there are different thoughts on the ‘best’ way to use them.

So, let’s think about this for a minute. What would be the optimal way to use affirmations? I don’t think that that should be that hard of a question to answer. We could experiment a little and we should to find out the ‘best’ for us.

What would I do if I wanted to really get the most out of affirmations for myself? Here is my answer for myself.

Create a list of very, very, very well thought out affirmations that address the specific things I want to work on. Take time and really think about what I want and how to write out those affirmations for the best results. Most of what I have read suggest about ten, so that is what I’m going to go for. Ten affirmations. There are different approaches to writing an affirmation. One area in which there seems to be some room for experimenting seems to be the “I, You, or Your Name” approach. To me, you can use all three and count that as one affirmation. “I am organized”, “You are organized”, “Jeff is organized”. Now, I call what I wind up with thirty statements, but really just ten affirmations.

Another thing I would consider is whether I would want long affirmations or short and sweet affirmations. There is a thread around here somewhere on process affirmations. I’d review that thread. I’d also make some that were short and sweet. I could either try one type for a while exclusively and see what happens and then the other type, or I could mix them. To get the optimal result I guess the best way would be to experiment with each kind exclusively for a bit.

Another thing I have read is that they work far better if there is emotion in the affirmation. To me, this is tricky and difficult. It takes effort to gin up enthusiasm and sometimes this just isn’t going to happen. I can’t speak for everyone, but for me it is difficult. I could however record them and put enthusiasm or earnestness into my recordings even if I had to pretend or act like I felt enthusiastic. It has been proven that feelings will follow actions. If you force yourself to smile, for example, you will begin to feel better. No “iffy” stuff there. It’s true. Just like 2+2=4. I say “record” them because it seems obvious to me that recorded affirmations can play in the background while you are doing things and it takes virtually no effort to hear them – even if you aren’t paying attention to them I feel certain that this seems like something worth doing. And I, for one, believe that affirmations that are simply heard in the background are accepted by the subconscious more easily than ones that are consciously thought about, because there is no conscious resistance putting up a fight. If you are out of shape and say “I am in shape”, then your conscious mind will say “Oh, no you aren’t”. When we are listening to them passively the conscious mind doesn’t put up that resistance.

What are some other things to think about. Well, writing them out by and and saying them aloud as you do so, I have read, is quite effective. Even if your conscious mind resists what you are writing and saying, I think it is worth the time to do it. One of the problems with writing them out every day like this is that your hand gets worn out. I can attest to this. It also takes a lot of time. No one is going to write out an affirmation one thousand times every day. It is still worth it to write them out quite a few times every day, or at least several times a week in an affirmation journal. There is something in the physical acts of writing and saying aloud that do ‘something’ that make them more effective. Journaling is a good idea anyway, I believe you could mix these activities together. Write a few affirmations while you are journaling.

Another thing to take advantage of is leverage, or the 80/20 rule. Rationally think about the things that are going to have the biggest positive impact on your life right now. Those are what we want to focus on. I think these things are going to stick out like sore thumbs for us. They will be obvious if we think about it.

We might also consider balance in our lives as well and have a well rounded set of affirmations and mix a few extra affirmations that address some specific areas we individually want to work on more.

What are some more things that we ‘know’. Well, we know that it takes about two to six weeks to create a habit. This can me a little misleading though. Unless your are talking about some highly addictive drug or something, but are talking about something more ‘normal’ like a life habit then it takes about that long to start making the real lifestyle change. To really make that ‘groove’ – to really make it a habit or lifestyle change it takes about six months to a year. If, for example, you were to start going for a daily walk, after a few weeks it would start to become natural to you. You wouldn’t really have to ‘make’ yourself go for a walk. In a short period of time, NOT going for a walk would seem out of the ordinary. If you do resist that urge though, for whatever reason, you will quickly lose that urge. If, however, you stick with it, then over time all resistance to that urge will fall away and you will just do it. It is now part of who you are.

I think it makes sense to talk about routines. There are routines that will make your life better. How you get up in the morning – what you do – and how you shut down for the night, how and what you eat and so on are worth some time to think about. It makes sense to me that putting in some effort in figuring out and implementing smart routines as habits, real true lifestyle changes would have a huge impact on our lives. Affirmations and smart routines are synergistic.

The last thing that comes to mind are physical tools. The simplest ones are pencils and paper. These are cheap and effective. Flashcards or writing out stuff as a part of your morning and/or evening routine makes a lot of sense to me. The other tools that come to mind are audio devices. Most of us can look around our house and see the useless crap we have spent our money on. Something that would be worthwhile would be having some audio devices in our environment that played our affirmations or even other things – like things we want to learn – 24/7. They don’t have to be loud to be effective. Being barely audible in many cases would probably be more effective anyway. I am thinking shower area, bedroom, office area.

One more thing occurred to me. Little changes add up to big changes. Most of us probably won’t make a sudden shift in the way we life. I’m not wired that way. If you try to make a major change all at once and radically change your behavior it might not take. If you do and it does work I applaud that. Wish I could do it myself. Maybe you are one of the people that can read an article and make huge changes in your behavior immediately. If, however, you try something like that and fail you shouldn’t just throw up your hands and say affirmations don’t work. Maybe you have to incorporate changes a little more slowly or something. I’m a work in progress and you are too.

Please share your thoughts and ideas. This could really be made into a worthwhile article or something.

I feel like I ought to include some stuff about tipping points and practicing at the limits. Tipping points because there are certain times when we are more likely to make real changes and practicing at the limits of your experience because that is where the biggest gains are made.

I’ve never even heard of Finbarr. I THINK I’ve heard of James Cullinan. I’ll have to look them up. And, just an aside, I just want to say that I’m really enjoying everyone who has been participating and contributing thoughts on all of the threads lately. Lots of great stuff bouncing around on here lately!

Okay, I found Finbarr
I thought you were talking about an author. You are talking about a publisher. I also looked up James Cullinan, but didn’t recognize any of his titles. I did see that he had some stuff about affirmations though.

Selfcare has a thread on process affirmations somewhere. If I find it I’ll link it on this thread.

I want to say something about balance and the different areas of our lives. Many people compartmentalize their lives, but the different areas of our lives are really all part of one thing. So, I believe it is worthwhile to have a ‘balanced’ set of affirmations. First, I did a few searches and found some lists. Different lists had different words or areas so I’m going to post everything from the lists I found. Some words repeat, but you get the idea. Consider taking a little time and create a good set. Get away from distractions, I think it would be time well spent.

Spirituality, Mind, Body, Relationship, Work,Family, Spiritual, Emotional, Work, Social, Financial, Cultural, Recreational, Physical, Intellectual, Money, Health, Family Time, Religious/Spiritual, Knowledge/Learning, Social, Health, Relationships, Personality, Happiness, Parenting, Family Activities, Finances, Hobbies/ Interests…

Okay, so here are a couple of articles that look very worthwhile:
How To Achieve Life Balance
The Wheel of Life
A Balanced Life

That wheel of life thing looks pretty neat.

And I don’t know why, but for some reason This Scene from “As Good as it Gets” crossed my mind. Great movie!!! I want the noodle salad!

Here was another article I found, but forgot to add.

Recording affirmations to music is a great thing to do, but what can you do to keep your affirmations fresh? Well, you can run two music players if you have enough ram and most of you probably do unless your system tray is full of background programs. I’m not gonna go into that stuff ‘cause I don’t know enough about it to be able to explain it very well, but with two music players going one can be playing affirmations that aren’t set to music and the other can be streaming a variety of music. You can still get the benefit of stereo in your headphones with the affirmation stuff if you want, just do the stereo effects while recording your affirmations, but don’t set them to music. Now you can open up something like media player and have it repeat the affirmations and open up another media player and have it stream your music. There must be at least half a dozen free music players you can download for free that are rated highly. Go to download.com and search for media players and read some reviews.

I stumbled across this video by accident. It gives you a glance at “brainwave technology”. You can create these types of audios yourself with your computer, it’s not that hard to do. I’ve done it. I don’t know if this stuff really makes a difference or not; it may just be pseudo-science. I can attest that when I have used these types of waves that I could ‘feel’ something going on. If anyone knows of any solid research into this stuff please share it.