Affirmations and denials DO NOT change conditions; they change your thoughts about conditions.
Focus on Your Thinking
If you have a new product to launch, but your product has not yet found its audience. What you say – good or bad – about your lack of sales does not change the fact that you do not have sales. You may affirm, “I have plenty of sales! I have more sales than I can imagine possible! Everyone wants to purchase my product now!” Or you may openly express your frustration: “No one is paying attention to my efforts. I will never get this product adopted by a big enough market to earn me any money.”
Neither of these statements changes the fact that you do not have sales. But, these statements DO influence what you think about your lack of sales. And what you think about your lack of sales determines the ultimate outcome. Your words – positive or negative – DO NOT change your experience; rather, they change what you think about your experience.
This distinction in the application of affirmations and denials may seem nitpicky but understanding the mechanics of how change happens is key to living and creating deliberately.
Our lives unfold from the inside out. The words you speak change your life only to the degree that those words influence your thinking. Positive words spoken to a negative condition only work when there is a corresponding change in your mind.
No change in mind = No change in experience
Nearly everyone can site one experience wherein they made an affirmation and immediately saw a result. But the permanency of that result depended upon whether the underlying thinking was adjusted. Our affirmations and denials produce temporary results when we merely work it on the outside, rather than where it really counts on the inside.
A change in mind = A change in thinking
Thoughts are things and they occupy “space” in the mind. When properly applied, affirmations and denials remove old, weak, inefficient thoughts and replace them with new and better thoughts. A mental house cleaning is even more necessary than a physical one, for the outer is always a reflection of the inner.
The most important element to grasp about affirmations and denials is that, first and foremost, they are mental processes. Because our lives are so outwardly oriented, our first instinct is to focus upon outer behavior. We develop rules – “if you speak your affirmations for 21 days, you create a new habit.” When that does not work, we say, “well, what you really needed to do was speak it 21 times per day for 21 days.” Someone else will come along and say, “No, you have to write and speak them 21 times per day for 21 days.” Yet another will say, “21 is not enough, you need 40 days because 40 is the number of spiritual completion.” And, so it goes.
It matters not whether you speak them, hum them, sing them or dance them. Words spoken without the corresponding mental attitude produce no results. Outward behavior is always secondary to inner thinking. Adjust your mental attitude first.
A change in thinking = A change in experience
Now, it is your turn. Can you see a usefulness to focusing your affirmations and denials on your thinking rather than on your outward experience? Do you think this adjustment will make the difference in how you are using affirmations and denials? What other distinctions have you observed that make the difference between affirmations and denials that work and those that do not work?
A Poem a Day Brings Money My Way! 