Almost all writings on conscious manifestation expound the benefits of Affirmation. I know, because I’ve read thousands of pages of material on the subject, have watched innumerable videos, and have attended multiple in-person trainings over the last 25 years.
So, people go on chanting.
“I’m rich beyond my wildest dreams”.
“I’m a millionaire”
“I am driving that car I have been dreaming of for so long”
And so forth.
After weeks and sometimes months of such affirmations, they give up. Nothing happened. Their dreams remained as far away as they were.
The problem doesn’t lie in the concept of affirmations, but somewhere else.
In the examples I gave above, there’s one big issue. In most of the affirmations, the “lack” of what is affirmed for is very clear. “Beyond my wildest dreams”, “I have been dreaming of for so long” etc. merely reinforce the idea that the dream is indeed far far away.
But there’s an even bigger reason why affirmations don’t work for most people starting out on this journey.
Let e take a quick detour here and talk about something else. You will see the connection in a minute.
Let’s say you love design. You want to be a designer, perhaps someday do character design for Marvel or Disney movies.
You are excited about the thought and start thinking of a path to get started. Five years – you give yourself five tears to get to the very top – to Hollywood.
You buy a copy of Photoshop, take some online courses on Photoshop and start off. To sustain yourself while chasing your dream, you do some Photoshop retouching work on the side.
A year or two go by. You have gotten pretty good at Photoshop. You know all of its obscure features. You can do almost anything one asks you to do on the software. You have published some articles on how to use Photoshop, Your YouTube channel on this is picking up.
All very good.
But what happened to the dream of becoming a “designer”? Being great at Photoshop is becoming great on a tool. That’s not going to make you a “designer”.
You see, it works the other way around.
Designers use Photoshop to bring their vision to life. Photoshop power users don’t automatically become designers.
Affirmation is a tool. Doing it mechanically – no matter how many times you do it, what words you use or what rituals you follow around it, is not going to do a thing unless you understand the meaning and purpose behind it. You have to keep your eyes on the final goal.
What’s needed to bring any manifestation to pass in your physical world is to impress upon your subconscious the truth of that desire having already manifested.
Repetition is a tool to impress an idea on your subconscious mind and Affirmations are those repetitions.
However, repeating something that your logical mind rejects instantly will have no effect. chanting a sentence is not going to impress the meaning of that sentence on your subconscious mind if the conscious mind tags it as a lie.
You have to find a way to shut your logical mind down.
Do this:
- Write down your desire in a couple of simple sentences. Keep your manifestation goal just beyond what you would think possible normally, especially if you are new to this process.
- Create an affirmation based on your goal. Make sure there are no words indicating your lack or yearning for it. Include words that inspires you and lights you up.
- Have conversations with your own rational mind. Convince it that even though the affirmation is not true in this frame of reference, it is so in a different dimension and so you are not wrong in affirming it. This works great for me.
- Have an invisible means of support. Have faith on something (doesn’t matter what, as long as the faith is absolute) and now you can push your logical reasoning aside because the concept or object you have faith in, is going to make the affirmation come to reality in your world.
- If there are still lingering doubts or resistance, eliminate those through EFT (more on this in a later article).
There are a couple of other, a bit more esoteric, modalities that I use for manifestation, and they also work. However, it’s for those who have already experienced success, released their beliefs around the sole idea of object-based 3D reality and are excited to explore further.
Note that you don’t have to completely disregard science. That’s impossible. You know that gravity ensures you don’t fly away from earth. You know that electricity lights the bulb. This is science and true.
The thing is, there’s more beyond it.
The key is to understand the purpose behind affirmations and not just chant a string of words mechanically. You are impressing a new idea on your subconscious. It’s different from the task based goal achievement process that we all are so used to.
If you affirm that you are “rich” for 5 minutes and then pick up the phone and chat with your friend on how difficult life is with your inadequate financial situation – what do you think your subconscious mind is going to register?
So, whenever I work with anyone on manifestation, I tell them to establish an initial foundation of belief system. Without that foundation, you may find pennies on the sidewalk or at best, receive an “unexpected” tax return – but not really what you were desiring for, no matter how much you claim yourself to be “abundant” or “prosperous”.
Immense richness is all around us. Whether you use affirmations or any other tool, you CAN manifest your own abundant life, if you follow the right path.
Until next time, stay true to your Mindful Life Design.