It’s often said that change is hard. In a sense, this is true – try going on a diet or starting a new exercise regime; try to give up smoking. For most people, these are not easy things to change. But conscious and positive change is possible and people manage it every day. One way of bringing about such change is the use of affirmations.

Taking responsibility

The most important part of effecting any kind of personal change is accepting responsibility for yourself. Of course, there are lots of things you can’t control – in fact, there is hardly anything you can control in the outside world – but you do have complete power over the way you respond to events and circumstances.

Essentially, you are always operating from a position of ‘cause’ or ‘effect.’ People who believe that they are being carried along by circumstances, that they have no power to change their experience of life, or that they are victims, are operating from ‘effect,’ whereas those who feel empowered and in control of their life experience are working from a ‘cause’ position. It is essential that you orient yourself at ‘cause’ – that you believe in your own personal power to transform your experience – in order to make any kind of positive change.

Subconscious behavior patterns

For the most part, the way we behave is dictated by the subconscious programmes which have been built up over the course of our lifetime, mostly when we were young. These programmes determine the way we respond to situations and, therefore, how we experience reality. Someone who believes that people are always trying to take advantage will interpret a compliment very differently from someone who always takes people at face value, and their experience of this situation will, consequently, be very different.

There are no inherently good or bad subconscious programmes, but some will serve you better than others in most situations.

Challenging subconscious behavior patterns

The subconscious programmes we have built up over the years are firmly embedded, but this is not to say they cannot be changed. Often, they can be changed surprisingly quickly. There are several techniques to do this – the use of affirmations is a simple and effective way to do so. An affirmation is simply a statement which is repeated and which, over time, seeps into the subconscious and replaces a particular belief or programme.

The key to successful affirmations

How do they work? Affirmations are essentially a challenge to the subconscious. They are statements about how you would like something to be rather than the way it is. When faced with this challenge, the subconscious will either resist it or reappraise itself. If an affirmation is wildly different from your current experience, it is likely that the affirmation will be strongly resisted by the subconscious and will either be ineffective or will take a long time to take hold.

Persistent use of any affirmation will, eventually, bring about a change, but the more challenging the affirmation is to the subconscious, the longer it will take for the subconscious to reach the point of reappraisal.

This means that, if you want your affirmations to work well, it is better to take a stepwise approach. Create an affirmation which, while exciting and challenging to you, is not so far away from your current experience that

The keys to making affirmations work are:

Forming a challenging statement which is not so far away from your present situation that the subconscious rejects it completely.

A strong emotional content – the affirmation should make you feel excited and energized.

Use of the present tense – form the affirmation as if it is already true.

Persistence – affirmations can take time; they are like water washing over a rock and wearing it away slowly.

The persistent use of proper affirmations can make a huge impact on your experience of life by changing your subconscious programmes. They are deceptively simple but get to the root of the issue by changing the deep structures which dictate our emotional and physiological responses to situations.

Give them a go and see what difference they can make over time.