Affirmations

As we have mentioned earlier, affirmations forms for the basis of the various beliefs we hold about ourselves and life in general. The beliefs, as we learn in basic psychology, are housed in our subconscious minds, which (the subconscious mind) is in turn what dictates our moment to moment actions, though many of us imagine that it is the conscious mind that dictates our actions, and that our actions are as a result of conscious thought.

The only way you change your subconscious mind is through affirmations. This can be understood when you see affirmations in their widest sense, rather than the through the narrow prism through which they have come to be seen in recent days. As we mentioned earlier, we are always making affirmations right from the first moment when we wake up in the morning up to the very last moment when we sleep at night, and possibly even when we are sleeping. This is another way of saying that every thought we think is really (in effect) an affirmation, that serves as yet another building block to our belief systems (that is, the beliefs we hold about ourselves and our lives).

It would therefore follow that the key to reprogramming your subconscious mind would be by changing your moment to moment thinking (which would be, in effect, changing the affirmations you make about yourself and life on a moment to moment basis). The first step in this direction is making an effort to observe your moment to moment thoughts (something which may prove to be rather tricky, because some of us are too easily distracted). Nonetheless, developing the self-discipline to observe your moment to moment thinking will reveal that your thinking pattern is made of both positive and negative beliefs, though it has a tendency to gravitate towards the negative if left to its devices; just as a garden can harbor both useful plants and weeds, with a tendency to harbor more of the weeds if left to its own devices. In other words, the negative is the 'default setting'. So what you would need to do, besides observing your moment to moment thinking is replacing every negative thought (which is in effect an affirmation) that rears itself up with a positive one.

Take note though, that just substituting the negative for the positive once in a while is not likely to help you in reprogramming your subconscious, because most of the beliefs you would be looking to get rid of are likely to be very deeply ingrained. You have to make it a habit. You should work towards a point where - every moment of your life - you are perpetually watching your mind, and replacing negative thoughts (which as we have seen are in effect negative affirmations) with more positive thoughts, which are in effect positive affirmations, more in line with what you want in life.

Studies have shown, repeatedly, that we tend to first act - and then think in almost all instances, though the sequence of events here is usually such that we may be more inclined to imagine that we first thought and then acted.

And from all this, it follows the subconscious mind is what really controls our lives (with the conscious mind only playing a peripheral role in our lives). It also follows that the only way we can change our moment to moment actions, is not by attempting to change our conscious mind, but by changing our subconscious minds so that when the time for action comes, we are 'automatically' inclined to act positively and in line with our goals.

But just how does one change their subconscious mind? Affirmations come back into focus.

As you progress in your subconscious reprogramming venture, you would reach a point where you can not only replace negative thoughts (read affirmations) with positive ones, but where you can actually forestall the incidence of the negative affirmations using 'ready-made' positives. This way, you get an opportunity to get rid of any negativity in your life - and this can have a profound positive effect in your life.

As a first step in this direction, you would have to work out what it is that you want in life. Do you want financial success? Do you want social success%u2026or what is it that you really want? The next step in towards making proactive affirmations would be creating positive statements regarding what you want, so that if financial success is what you want, you can come up with a statement like 'I deserve financial success' (many of us, deep down, believe we don't) or if social success is what you want, you can have a statement like 'people like and respect me' which you focus on consciously on a moment to moment basis (so that the opposite negative thought has no foothold in your mind in the first place). This way, by the way, you would not only have an opportunity to kick mediocrity - which is born of negativity - out of your life, but also actually deliberately creating abundance in your life.