Empowering Self-Talk: How to Make Affirmations That Inspire Change

"Change Your Thoughts and Change Your World" - Norman Vincent Peale

"Every day in every way I am getting better and better." You probably heard this famous affirmation popularized in the 1920's by Emil Coue, a French pharmacist and psychologist. After observing his patients heal faster when they focused their mind on positive healing images, Coue developed this therapeutic method he called optimistic autosuggestion. His belief that, "you are what you think" proved to have great success in rehabilitating the thousands of patients he treated each year.

You might ask what makes this deceptively simple affirmation so powerful. And how can I duplicate it?

Start with the area you want to work on. Emil Coue addressed the health concerns of people who were ill and wanted to get well. Your challenge may be with finances, career, family, relationships, physical or emotional health, etc. Define your source of stress.
Make your affirmation simple and specific. Coue's autosuggestion is a simply stated imagery for healing. Yours may contain specific relaxation instructions, or suggestions for improved self-esteem or a mantra for success. Make sure it describes exactly what you want to achieve. For example you want to ask for a raise, "I am clear and direct asking my boss for a raise".
Powerful affirmations are positive and carefully expressed. Phrase them as if they are occurring now. Notice Coue says, "I am getting better and better." Avoid negative statements. For example instead of "I will not be nervous asking for a raise". Use a positive version such as "I am letting go of tension when I talk to my boss" or "I am calm and assertive asking for a raise."
An affirmation works best when combined with an image or mental picture. So write it down, close your eyes and visualize the touch, taste and feel of the change you want to create.
Repeat your affirmation throughout the day, every day. The more you say it the more connected it becomes to your desired outcome. Routine repetition was an important part of Coue's method. He recommended his patients repeat "Every day in every way I am getting better and better" upon awakening, throughout the day and before going to sleep at night. When he put the power of healing into the hands of his patients Coue had great success curing them of illness and disease.

Affirmations are good for your mental health. Evidence proves that serotonin and endorphins, those feel good hormones, are released when we focus on positive thoughts. This scientifically based evidence works even if you are a skeptic.

So take a cue from Emil Coue. Practice positive thinking. Make affirmations that work to improve your life. You have nothing to lose but time and everything to gain. Like a happier outlook on life, less anxiety, and better health. The power to change is in you.

Barbara Mitchell DCH is a Stress Management Consultant, Doctor of Clinical Hypnotherapy and author of "When You Need a Timeout" a self-help guide of relaxation and energy exercises, motivational examples, diet and pampering tips for a life less stressful. Won "Finalist "Women's Issues" National Indie Excellence Book Awards and Global eBook Awards. Her CD "Just Relax Like This" features the top five relaxation techniques to be a more vibrant person (BA MVP).

Dr. Barbara has a consulting practice in New Jersey where she helps clients resolve stress related personal, emotional, job burnout, anxiety and trauma issues. See her full bio at http://www.thecalmingbreath.com/.

Original article

Positive Affirmation Techniques to Manifest Change

You can manifest many deep changes in your life using positive affirmations. It is simple and it is true. This article addresses how to make these positive suggestions work for you. Start with the following affirmation. Read it to yourself:

"I have the right to believe in myself, regardless of my past." Now, read it out loud three times.

Now read this one: "I believe in myself." Now, read that one out loud three times.

Did you get stuck here, ("But it's not true!")? Type "I believe in myself" on a pretty piece of paper, and follow the suggestions in the rest of this article. If you are ready to expand into different affirmations, follow the suggestions in the rest of this article. You will have fun as your life unfolds in a new a delightful way.

When you come to believe in yourself in a deep way, your life changes, and other people change around you. You also find that you create, use, and believe in affirmations on a daily basis; it becomes a habit like brushing your teeth. These short statements become more and more your reality as time goes by. Your life becomes easier, more fun, and creative the very day you begin to use affirmations. Does this sound like a good idea?

In the beginning, you want to saturate your subconscious mind with this new information to redirect how you build your life. Your past may have been rather drab, or even truly negative. To build a happier life, you will need to change the drab and negative words of your deep mind. At first your mind may only accept the new ones as a joke or with a sarcastic grin. That's the old self talking, trying to hang on. The new statements become true as you soften your shell and allow them in. Here are some ways to do this (and I learn new ones all the time):

Start with short statements that do not feel true for you at the moment, but that you wish were true. I created a list to jumpstart my life (again) in 2009. I began with little phrases I found in magazines. Here is what I started with: "I can play in the sky" "watch me soar" "develop our projects" "stretch the imagination" among others. I was pretty timid at the time. There I was: Within six months I had been widowed, undergone a big surgery on my face for cancer, was jobless, and had just put my 16 year old dog-buddy down. I was not strong, did not believe in myself, and felt utterly alone. Notice, however, that I used the word "our". In reviewing my collection of affirmations at that time I noticed that, two years later, every single affirmation had come true!

Here are some techniques to create and use affirmations on a daily basis:

· Find phrases in magazines that you wish were true for you, or that you think could be true with just a little luck and/or effort. Cut them out and paste them on an 8 ½"X11" cardboard. Use something pretty or interesting or representative of your desires (again, magazines are great) as a backing before you start pasting your affirmations onto it. We are not talking artistic perfection here- the phrases can be placed somewhat randomly, or in perfect order. Put a happy picture of yourself in the middle of this board. That way, you are happily surrounding yourself with your new thoughts. Hang this board somewhere where you will see it at least twice a day. (I use my bathroom mirror.) Read every phrase each time you look at it. You will find that different phrases jump out at you on different days. I just find that interesting.

· Create three phrases for yourself. ("I am important" "I am a loving person" "I am loved" "I trust my creative spirit" and on and on) Type them out, write them in magic markers, and tape them to your dashboard, your bathroom mirror and your fridge. Notice that I am saying "and" here-do it all. You are making up for lost time, so feel free to flood your mind with them. Every time you see one of these notes, say it out loud. Make a song of it and sing it to yourself in the shower. After about a month or more, you will not notice them all over the dashboard or the fridge. They may even sound a bit boring. This is a good thing; you are accepting them deeply within you. Time for new ones.

· Are you more high-tech? Make a screensaver out of them, or have them randomly float by on your working screen. Set up your phone for random texts of your affirmations during the day. Do you have a computer calendar? Enter your affirmations on future days. You'll sort of forget what you wrote where, so you will have new affirmations daily throughout the month.

· Get a notebook of some kind, and when you realize that one of your affirmations has come true for you, take it and put it in the notebook. Date it, and write a short description of what has become true for you in this way. When you review it later, you will be surprised by your feeling of satisfaction.

Using your personal sense of direction and your creative spirit, you can make affirmations that help you grow in steps toward that happier, lighter, more exciting life that awaits you.

http://www.katebowditch.com/
I write about hypnosis practice itself and about those experiences that are felt and interpreted by the deepest aspects of ourselves. As a hypnotherapist and author for 15+ years, I explore how we incorporate information from our subconscious mind into our daily lives.

Please visit my website/blog to order my book, "20-20 Insight, Advanced Theory and Practice of Hypnosis:"
http://www.katebowditch.com/ (click on "hypnosis")

Original article

How to Change a Belief

"Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right."

The above is a statement that I have seen attributed to both Henry Ford and Confucius. According to the TV program Qi, Henry Ford was not a particularly nice person, so I prefer to think of it as being originated by that wise old owl, Confucius. It is a sentence that captures the essence of what it means to think positively; and yet, at the same time, it says so much about the unhelpful habit of pessimism.

To succeed, you need to become an optimist. You need to believe that you can do what you are setting out to achieve, whatever it is. As Walter D. Wintle put it:

Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man,
But sooner or later, the man who wins is the man who thinks he can.

Belief alone is not enough, of course, but without belief you won't be prepared to put in the necessary effort, so having belief in yourself is absolutely crucial. That brings up the question of how beliefs are formed and, if your beliefs are not serving you, whether or not they can be changed. First off, it is definitely possible to change your beliefs. Isn't that exactly what people do when they become Christians, for example? They chuck away one belief system and adopt another.

So we do know that it is possible to change our beliefs and, if you have a particular belief that is incongruent with you achieving your goals, then why should you not consider changing it? It seems like a very pragmatic thing to do to me. The process of changing a belief looks like this:

Disempowering BeliefDoubt / DisbeliefNew PossibilityNew Empowering Belief

Moving from stage 1 to stage 2 isn't at all difficult because, we don't really know anything at all with one hundred percent certainty. So, simply by asking ourselves to list reasons why our current belief is absurd is a good starting point for making a transition. Additionally, we can ask ourselves why we believe what we do and where is the real, hard evidence. By asking these questions, it is very easy to cause ourselves to doubt the truth of a belief we had previously held to be true and even move us to the understanding that our previous belief is unfounded and therefore possibly untrue.

So, I recommend that you do this with any self-limiting or disempowering belief you hold about yourself and your abilities. Once you have shaken off those negative, disempowering beliefs, you are ready to move forward to installing a new and empowering belief. My own favourite method is by use of affirmation. By repeatedly making positive statements about yourself, it is possible you get your subconscious mind to accept whatever you tell it. So choose the positive beliefs that will be empowering. Often these will be the reverse of your previous disempowering beliefs.

I am calmI am positiveI am valuedI am healthyI am confidentI am in control

Say each affirmation three times and repeat the procedure three times per day - nine times per day in total - and keep doing it until you begin to see the results in your life. You should feel different within one month of using positive affirmations and that's because you will be seeing the effects of these new positive and empowering beliefs.

What will happen as a result is that you will be more calm, confident and in control - or whatever else you decide to affirm. Why? Because a confident person is someone who believes they are confident and therefore acts in a way that we recognise as confident. So your behaviour will naturally begin to change as a consequence of changing your beliefs.

If you enjoyed this article, you will also enjoy The Inspiration Blog

Will Edwards is Founder of http://www.whitedovebooks.co.uk/

Original article