Remember that old Saturday Night Live skit with Stuart Smalley who would always look in the mirror and say “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me”?

Well, that was affirmations in action folks.

Affirmations are statements you repeat to yourself  in the hopes of convincing yourself that they’re true.  So if you’re afraid of spiders, you tell yourself 200 times a day “I’m not afraid of spiders, I’m not afraid of spiders…”, and hopefully, eventually, you’ll convince yourself that you’re……you guessed it…..not afraid of spiders.

Here’s the problem with affirmations.  First, you’re not that stupid.  You can’t just tell yourself something that isn’t true and somehow ’sneak’ it past your brain into your subconcious.  Your brain will call BS on it every time (unless you’re doing the affirmations in a subliminal manner or under hypnosis for instance, which bypasses the critical part of your brain).  You may be able to lie to other people, but it’s REAL hard to lie to yourself.

Second, it takes too long.  Most everyone gives up on it way before it would do any good.  Even if you were that patient, why would you want to wait months and months babbling the same old line when there’s much more effective ways to the same end results?

Lastly, affirmations stink because that’s not how you think!  You don’t think in words, you think in pictures.

Let me explain…

If Iask ask you to visualize “porcupine”, what do you do?

Do you see the letters P-O-R-C-U-P-I-N-E in your head?

Or do you see the animal with the quills?

The second, of course.

So when you tell yourself 200 times a day, “I’m not afraid of driving”, what happens?

Your brain sees what image?  AH-HA!   You being afraid of driving.

Well that sucks.  That’s not what you wanted at all.   You don’t want to keep burning that into your head do you?

So if you’re going to do affirmations, you have to do them in the positive.  Things like, “I’m relaxed and at peace when I drive”.  That way your brain pictures what?  Right - you being relaxed in the car.  Much better scene to replay over and over again in your mind.

You also have to make them realistic.  If you’re terrified of driving over bridges, don’t start with, “I feel totally happy and at peace on bridges”, because your brain will say, “No you don’t.  Liar, liar, pants on fire”.

Start with something more reasonable, like, “I can handle my anxiety on bridges and relax my shoulders”.  See?  You can believe that.  Work your way up.

The best thing to do is to perform affirmations visually.  To actually SEE the scene you want in your own head, so it’s more than just words and it’s more the way you think normally.

A very powerful way of doing this and “tricking” your subconscious into believing it is in the Driving Fear program,  and we’ve seen tremendous success with people using it.  Those of you who are using the program will know what I’m talking about.

This is the type of stuff that separates the wishy-washy “feel-good” fluff you’ll find other places from the hard hitting advanced techniques you’ll learn about in the program.   Affirmations are talk, I’m all about action.  I run a fluff free ship.  It’s not for everyone, only those that are ready to REALLY overcome their fear.
Talk to you soon.

Rich