Can affirmations improve the success rate of your manifestations?
If so… how? And why? Let’s look at the facts.
What Are Affirmations?
Affirmations are short, positive sentences.
The dictionary says:
“Something declared to be true; a positive statement or judgment.”
You’ve probably seen a lot of affirmations in your life. They are used for ads and warnings, for example. And that’s obviously because they work.
Think of these ones:
“Smoking kills.”
“Just do it.”
“Because you’re worth it.”
“Have it your way.”
“I’m loving it.”
When we’re talking about manifesting our desires, it’s the same thing but focused on what we want.
“I’m rich.”
“I make $20,000 per month easily.”
“I’m in a great relationship.”
“I live in my dream house.”
“I have a wonderful giving job.”
“My spouse appreciates me.”
Why Do They Work?
Why do they work?
And why should they be positive? Well, besides the fact that the dictionary says it’s a “positive statement or judgment” then there’s an important reason. Your mind cannot understand negatives.
The moment you add something negative, your mind conjures up the opposite.
Just try this example. “I’m not thinking of sliced lemon with juice running over my fingers.” What did you think?
Or a shorter one: Don’t think of a pink elephant.
It’s impossible not to think of the object in those sentences. To “not” think it, we first need to think it. And that’s why you should keep your affirmations positive.
You should keep them as short as possible.
Some books will tell you to come up with affirmations that are several lines long and contain around 100 words. That’s hard to remember. And that means you’ll either focus your conscious brain hard on remembering the words, or you’ll need to sit with your eyes open, reading from a piece of paper.
Neither will help you manifest your desires.
Short affirmations will also be easy to understand for the subconscious. That goes for all those ads, too, which will create an unexplainable desire in you to buy those things. Weird, huh?
But let’s talk plan now.
How Should You Make Them?
You need your own affirmations for this to work.
So how do you create them? This only takes three steps. Here they are:
- List what you want to manifest.
- Take one item at a time and write down a positive sentence.
- Tweak the sentence to become as short and memorable as possible.
Let’s say you want to stop eating Snickers. You’ve figured out that they taste wonderful, but they are not good for your body. You want to stop.
So step one is to write down a list, and first on your list you may have, “I want to stop eating Snickers.”
It’s a good and healthy desire, but it’s not a positive statement. Now, for step two, how can you turn what you don’t want into something positive? That’s often a bit tricky.
You do it by exchanging it for something you do want.
For example, “I want to eat healthy food only. Food that makes me feel good and food that makes me drop fat.”
That’s nice and positive.
And you can’t both do that and eat Snickers. Now, I’m sorry if you feel a sudden urge to eat Snickers. The good news is that with affirmations, you’ll get over that craving.
Step three is to make it short and memorable.
We do that by deleting all the unnecessary words. We’ll only keep enough to make the sentence make sense. So in our example, we had “want to eat healthy food only. Food that makes me feel good and food that makes me drop fat.”
We could say that a lot shorter and in present tense (I want is out In the future, not something I have today):
“I eat healthy food that makes me feel good and drop fat.”
Now we have a short, memorable affirmation.
There’s a way to tweak it, though. This secret hack will make it impossible for your subconscious to doubt that your affirmations are true. Do you want to discover what it is?
Tweak Your Affirmation with This Secret Hack
You know how when you use an affirmation like, “I’m slender and fit and look young,” if you’re obese right now…
Your mind refuses to believe that affirmation. And when it doesn’t believe you, you won’t manifest your desired result. How can you trick your conscious mind into believing?
Ask why.
The moment you ask why in your affirmation, your brain will work on answering that question. And it can only work on one thing at a time. So answering why will overtake the doubt.
Let’s take an example.
Original affirmation: “I am rich.”
Add “why”: Why am I so rich?
As you can see, you need to move around the words a bit and maybe add one. Let’s do some more examples.
Original affirmation: “I eat healthy food that makes me feel good and drop fat.”
Adding “why” this can become:
“Why do I always eat healthy food that makes me feel good and drop fat?”
Or shorter: “Why does the healthy food I eat make me feel good and drop fat?”
Your mind will instantly go, “Hm… yes, that’s odd. Now that I think about it… how come?”
It won’t for one second consider the three Snickers you just gulped down before you made your decision. You’ll keep your mind occupied with your “why” question.
The only thing left now is to make sure you say your affirmations every day.
Make Them a Daily Habit
Stack your habits.
Time is not the best way to add a new habit. It’s much easier and better to attach it to an existing habit. One you do every day.
For example, after brushing your teeth, after drinking coffee, after washing hands…
Or before those actions, if you prefer.
I find that after is easier to remember. I use habit stacking for doing my daily exercise and for saying my daily affirmations. I never skip a day.
Saying your daily affirmations doesn’t take long. You just need to remember to do it.
Conclusion
Affirmations can absolutely improve your success rate with manifestations.
The trick is to create good affirmations. Short. Positive and memorable.
And then to do them every day.
Use habit stacking for the latter. If you do them after you brush your teeth, you can look yourself in the eyes in the mirror while you say them. It will seem like you’re sending yourself an important message.
Which you are, in fact.