What is the power in the words of an affirmation? Can you really change your life or even just a habit by sitting around repeating a sentence for a few minutes a day? Isn't that just wishful thinking?
Not if you're focusing and concentrating in a playful, open, kind and gentle way. If those aren't the words you usually associate with change and accomplishment, then you're about to learn how to completely transform your effort and how you feel about your life. The result is absolutely transforming your life without changing a single thing about the objects, people or relationships of your world. You won't change them, but they will change, because you will change and you are the linchpin for lasting transformation.
Let's say this: if you think that practicing success affirmations is nothing more than repeating the words of a phrase a specified number of times or for a specified length of time, then it might be wishful thinking. How you practice is key to empowering your success affirmation.
The keys here are focus and concentration and there are many techniques for creating both. They are mutually reinforcing, so practicing with one will strengthen the other. Focus on your affirmation by giving the meaning of the words your full attention. Listen to the sound of your own words, either internally or by saying them out loud, or both. Imagine the situation the words describe, and feel the feelings that engenders. Allow the truth of the words to fill your awareness for the time you are practicing, even if it's only three repetitions.
Listen to the sound of your words. The best way to undertake an affirmation practice is to say your success affirmation at least three times in three different ways: out loud, softly and then silently. You can repeat this process in reverse order to create a wave-like experience moving from loud to silent and back, permeating every level of your being. Find a place and time allowing you to say the affirmation in a regular conversational tone of voice, like you were telling it to your best friend. Do this at least three times. Then whisper it out loud, as if you were telling your friend in a theater, and do this at least three times. Finally, repeat it to yourself silently, allowing the truth and meaning to seep into your awareness and color your experience. Continue with this pattern for as long as you have set out for your practice.
As you repeat and listen to the words, allow yourself to feel how you would feel if you utterly and completely believed them to be true. This feeling may be thready and elusive at first, but the more you cultivate and court it, the more robust and vivid it will become. Do not be deterred if you have a day when all the confidence you'd previously built up seems to have vanished. This is merely a distractor sent out by the habit that is dying in a last ditch attempt to weaken your practice, and it is actually a signal of your success.
Concentration comes in when you commit to returning to the words and feeling whenever you notice that your attention has wandered. Attention will wander: that's what it does.
Evolutionarily, our attention has adapted to scan our environment and react to movements, sounds and patterns that could promise nourishment or portend harm. Our attention is set on scan and react, scan and react in an endless loop. Because we are capable of paying attention to our attention, we can cultivate the ability to settle the attention and remain in presence rather than reaction. Second order awareness gives us the possibility of interrupting the endless loop of seeking threats in order to see what really is and take in the present moment.
Concentrate on your success affirmations simply by coming back to its power and truth every time you become aware that you've wandered off in reaction to a distraction. You will strengthen your ability to interrupt habitual reaction patterns as well as your awareness of the powerful truth your affirmation describes. By creating a feeling based, present tense affirmation and committing to give it attention and return to it from distraction, you have the power to change your point of view, and so your world.
No comments:
Post a Comment