Article:
Making Affirmations Work - Page 2
by Rev. Sue Annabrooke Jones
Ten Conditional Factors
There are conditional factors (of which I have identified ten)
that can either sabotage your affirmations or make them successful.
1. Your ability to suspend belief. You must be able to temporarily suspend your current belief in order to substitute the new
one. If you are recovering from sickness or injury and wish to heal faster, for example, it is crucial
that you be able to imagine yourself healthy and back in the swing of life. If you can visualize this
in your mind's eye, so much the better. But you must be able to at least imagine it as being real when
you say your affirmation.
2. Your ability to focus your mind and concentrate.
3. Your ability to sustain the new thinking and use it
repetitively and regularly. I recommend saying an affirmation thrice. Three is the
magic number because you are attempting to convince your conscious mind, your subconscious mind and
your superconscious mind.
Continue affirming for what you want often, at quiet moments when you're
relaxed and especially at times when you are translating your intent into action.
4. The degree of your motivation. Sheer determination is a
formidable force. Strong motivation can override all kinds of other deficiencies and limitations. It
can move mountains.
5. The strength of the conscious cross-current. By
cross-current, I mean an opposite way of thinking or behaving. If you are single, for example, but want
to be partnered with someone, it will do you little good to affirm for a partner while mentally listing
all the benefits of being unattached and cataloging all the problems that can arise in relationships.
Affirmations work best when all your thoughts are brought into alignment, so practice being vigilant
and learn to monitor your thoughts. If you are undecided on an issue, accept your ambivalence as
being valid for you at the moment and affirm for things you know you want.
6. The strength of the unconscious cross-current. A hidden
agenda, such as an unexamined belief, can ruin your chances of success. If you are affirming for more
money but deep down inside believe you are unworthy of receiving it, you may have trouble manifesting
that money. The same holds true for a secret payoff dynamic lurking beneath the surface of your
awareness.
You may, for example, affirm for greater clarity even while deliberately fogging your
mind with confusion in order to avoid facing certain facts. So look within for hidden agendas, root
out any that don't serve you, and scrutinize them in the light of day. Affirmations work best when all
beliefs and desires are brought into alignment.
7. What it is you are affirming for. Miracles can
happen, yes, but sometimes we must work within limitations. If you are a quadriplegic, don't waste
your energy affirming you're going to sprout new limbs and become a figure skating champion who
dazzles the world with a quintuple Lutz in the upcoming Olympics. It isn't going to happen. We must
be willing to get real with ourselves.
It is helpful to remember that affirmations can help us even when we are
forced to work within the severest of restrictions. At the very least, they can help us to sharpen
our perceptions, strengthen our abilities to learn and expand our capacity to love. They can also
help us deepen our wisdom and grow in discernment, patience and forbearance.
8. When you are intend to achieve it. We tend to want
what we want now. But sometimes, owing to karma (wheels set in motion at an earlier time), what we
want may more appropriate for some other phase of life.
9. Your ability to extricate yourself from the mass
consciousness, to think outside the box of cultural beliefs. If what you are affirming for
seems possible to you but impossible by others or by society at large, you may need to unplug from
the "mass head".
Talk show host, actor and humanitarian award winner Oprah Winfrey attributes her
success to the fact that as a child, she refused to buy into the commonly shared belief that a poor
Black girl growing up in Mississippi could never become successful.
10. Your ability to back up your affirmation with action.
This is perhaps the most important condition of all. Always match your affirmation to right action,
and for maximum results, perform them simultaneously. If you want to become a more organized person,
say your affirmations while organizing your closet, setting up a filing system or cleaning out your
garage.
If you want to become slim, say your affirmations while eating a low-calorie meal, while
drinking water and during periods of exercise. If your affirmation is going to manifest, your whole
being must believe that what you are affirming for is true — and your whole being WILL believe
it's true if you perform the affirmation and the action simultaneously.
Affirmations appear throughout this
site. See the navbar at left
to find the affirmations that interest you.
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