[Adam Sargant]

Just a series of thoughts that I had this morning and am experimenting with.

It seems to me that affirmations are effectively a means of installing beliefs, beliefs conducive to the redirection of attention in positive ways. If it is true that we manifest in our lives whatever we give our attention and energy too, then positive beliefs will enable us to manifest our positive destiny in this world.

Robert Dilts and others have described beliefs as having a threefold structure... usually, the expressed belief is just the tip of the iceberg... "I am a happy person"... the full belief structure being more complex and fitting in with the whole ecology of beliefs.

The typical structure runs something as follows

EVIDENCE >cause/effect relationship > EXPRESSED BELIEF > equivelance >MEANING

So, as evidence, the belief "I am a happy person" will have ready recollections of times when I feel happy, and as meaning something like "People feel good around me"... the cause effect relationship being discovered by asking questions like "I am a happy person because..." or "I know I am a happy person because...", and the equivalence relationship can be uncovered by asking questions like "Me being a happy person means that...".

This way of breaking it down seems to be helping my approach to affirmations... I always struggled with what seemed to me to be a blunderbus effect. Sometimes they worked, sometimes not, and I suspect the not working was down to the belief expressed not actually being fundementally congruent to the rest of my being. A bit hit and miss. By eliciting criteria by which I can evidence the belief and the greater meaning that holding the belief has for me, I somehow seem to bring the belief/affirmation into a position of greater congruence.

Seems to be room for experimentation anyhow :-)

In love and light

Adam