Do positive self affirmations actually work? The short answer is ?No? ? unless you?ve got a few years to spare and a serious reserve of perseverance. The problem is that positive-affirmation is directed at your conscious mind and, sadly, your conscious mind has absolutely nothing to do with the way you behave, how you react to others and events, how you view the world or, most importantly, the way in which you view yourself. However, as I said, if you throw enough muck at your conscious mind, sooner or later ? actually, definitely later ? some of that mud will eventually stick and make some sort of positive impression on your subconscious mind. However, you?d have to stick at it religiously and, even then, you?d be faced with an uphill war of attrition because your subconscious mind simply won?t believe what you?re trying to tell it if its view of reality is the opposite. Why? Your subconscious mind controls your beliefs, behaviours and reactions and actually creates your very own version of reality. Positive-affirmation is like trying to having a snowball fight in hell?s fiery furnace!!
That said, if you?re really determined to change your life, some area of your life, or change yourself, how you view yourself or some unpalatable behaviour or bad habit, it?s your subconscious mind that you must impress. It?s holding all the keys, has its hand on all the levers and its feet on all the pedals that either get your life moving in the fast lane or, more often than not, grind to an absolute and juddering halt.
In order to impress your subconscious mind, you?re going to have to become like a little child all over again ? but childlike as distinct from childish. When you were a child you paid full attention to the reality of the moment, using each of your five senses ? that is how you absorbed your current set of beliefs about the world and who you think you are. As an adult, you now pay little or no attention to reality today ? your subconscious mind pretty much makes it up for you as it goes along! ? with all the normal consequences. You?ve got to get real, to relearn how to pay full attention to what?s actually going on in front of you, instead of paying attention to your subconscious baggage that?s weighing you down.
The normal subconscious is living in the past. And the key to your future is here in the present. You must understand that the present moment is the only place and time where life is truly lived. As such, you?ve got to re-learn how to pay attention to what?s actually going on, not what your subconscious mind, peering out through its dirty lens of long-gone events, thinks is going on. This re-learning process involves training yourself how to pay attention to what you see, feel, hear, smell and taste. This training must be practiced in a place where you will not be disturbed so that, when the going gets tough in the so-called real world, you?re fully trained and ready to do your thing in a manner that will lead you onwards and upwards to the life that heart desires.
