Why Personalised Affirmations are more effective!

Affirmation work is the deliberate use of positive statements to change negative thinking and limiting beliefs about oneself.   Affirmations need to be positive, personal and in present tense to be effective.   Millions of people now use affirmation work to help them stay positive and to move forward in life.   Working with affirmations can be challenging at first as the positive statements that need to be made can feel like lies.   For example to say 'I am happy' when you feel miserable can be a difficult statement to believe.  

Thankfully though there are a couple of ways that can make the process of changing thoughts easier.  Louise L Hay, the leading voice in the world of affirmation use, advocates the use of mirror work.  Mirror work involves looking into a mirror whilst saying your affirmations.  Looking at yourself in the mirror whilst repeating your affirmations will help to give a sense of ownership to the positive statement .  

Another way to enhance the effects of using affirmations is to personalise them in your first name.   Adding your own first name to an affirmation speeds up the the process of taking ownership of the new way of thinking about yourself.   Ownership is required for any positive statement to take hold and begin to create better experiences.

Why personalise?     As children, most of us will have heard negative statements with our first name attached.  Any accusation with our name attached will have gone in deep, creating a false belief within us about ourselves.   It is this ownership of negative beliefs about ourselves that causes the low self-esteem, fear and frustration that can eventually lead to depression or harmful addictions.   Undoing these negative beliefs is a job that must be done in order to raise our self-esteem levels and get us back to a truer sense of ourselves.  As babies we would have felt freer and much closer to our true SELF but as each negative judgement was believed we will have moved further and further away from our true SELF .     The negative beliefs about ourselves need to be unravelled so that the free spirit of the baby/young child can be re-discovered and their naturally positive disposition returned.   Personalising your affirmations is one of the ways to re-discover yourSELF.

Who is SELF?   
  Our SELF is who we each are at deep within our core. 
  Our SELF is who we were as a free-spirited child. 
  Our SELF is unique and knows it.  
  Our SELF is strong in body, mind and spirit.   
  Our SELF can easily tune into what is going on around us and respond in a positive way.
  Our SELF can deal with mental and emotional upset and return us back to balance.      (Note how a young child can be distraught over something and then quickly be distracted by the  next exciting thing offered to them). 
  Our SELF brings something unique to planet earth.  
  Our SELF loves living here on earth and is committed to the greater good of all humanity and the planet. 

Each of us has a true SELF and until we re-discover our SELF we will always be chasing and searching.  We will remain vulnerable to being manipulated or to being at the mercy and demands of others.  

Re-discovering our SELF is the most important job we will ever do in our lifetime because it is from the connection with  our SELF that contentment and peace come.   Connection with our SELF requires quiet time, reflection time, healing time and meditation time.   The more time spent with our SELF the easier it becomes to connect, until one day we realise that we are spending more and more time being our true SELF.

How to personalise your own affirmations?  
If you have some affirmations that you like to use you could record them on your mobile phone.  Just say your name with the positive statement attached.   Record between 10-15 positive statements in your name and play them throughout the day.   Only use your first name as adding your surname is way too big a task to try to change and, besides, your true SELF has no surname.  Adding your first name will suffice.  If you prefer to listen to positive statements already prepared for you then you can order your own below as an aid to re-discovering your SELF.