Quote:
Originally Posted by Aspiring  Affirmations are among quick fixes I hate. I tested this kind of things in the past. It's short-term cheating of yourself. Never helps in the long run. |
I deeply disagree that affirmations are quick fixes. I used to believe the same as you. I started using them when I was in 8th grade. They totally helped me out, but then they seemed to not work any more because they seemed to stop making me feel good. This was just me in my transitions through my levels of conciousness as defined by steve's post
They totally help out in the long run. Here's why:
Because for someone who has not met a high enough level of conciousness yet, who is not able to control his own thoughts very well, this is a very powerful way of getting rid of the subconcious mental habit of saying negative thoughts. And negative thoughts just make things worse. Would you agree with me on that? Saying the positive thoughts instills hope, drive, motivation, happiness, purpose, ... well just good stuff, and ingrains in his subconcious mind the mental habit of believing in himself that he can in fact work towards the things that he desires, instead of always thinking negative thoughts which keeps him stuck in the lower rungs of the organized conciousness known as society. Do you agree with me that the leaders of the planet are those who are the most concious? just take a look at Steve's levels of conciousness article if you don't, I have a theory that negative thoughts are just nature's way of making sure that the hierarchy of society remains stable, because, after all, not everyone can be a leader, and that most people must do the daily, dull, low concious work, someone has to do the dirty work to keep the society running. Not everyone can be telling everyone else what to do, someone has to do it. Those with negative thoughts are the ones who do the dirty work.
But if you have developed your mind so that you are either concious enough so that you don't even think in words, then you are probably in a state such that you don't need most affirmations, and you are at a point where you just need to plan things out, and decide what actions you want to take. And that there is no internal resistance to act, it just a matter of gathering information to plan out how you want to act. You already really do believe that you have all potential, and that, you have enough motivation. And even if you don't have the feeling of motivation, you don't need that "good feeling" of motivation because it does not matter that you are not in a good feeling, because it is just a feeling after all.
Feelings only matter if they effect your thoughts, such that they start to become negative. And negative thoughts instill a subconcious mental pattern/habit of keeping you in your current state, in paralysis, unmotivated, and in fear, thus not able to act, except only with the subconcious habits that are already ingrained in your mind, thus keeping you in place of your current level of society.
But if you don't even think in words, then you can almost induce any state that you wish, and it is just really a matter of consciously choosing what subconcious patterns that you want to install so that you can work much more faster and automatically. However, even if you are at that high enough level of conciousness, then doing affirmations is still incredibly effective when consciously deciding to transition to installing new subconcious patterns of habits/behavior.
Transistions,
Affirmations ease the transitions), because creating affirmations in your mind calls up more circuits in your mind, and opens up the specific pathways in your reticular activating system, so that you concious mind is directed towards information that will program your subconscious mind so that it can fulfill the goal that you've sent it to accomplish via your affirmation.
The majority of my thinking is not in words. The majority of my concious activity does not show itself to me in words. Internal words of thought are just one way to report your thoughts to your own "I". The majority of my thoughts are nonverbal. I think more with my feelings [perhaps that's called intuition?] by being concious of what my somatosensory cortex (body image) tells me is happening inside my mind so that I can just direct my subconcious thoughts so that they need not even bother with the slow, perhaps energy intensive, process of internally being verbalized. Instead I recognize that the thoughts are just flying very rapidly, just slightly peaking their head to "I", just so I recognize intuitively the content of those nonverbal thoughts, but I don't slow them down or waste brain energy by forcing them to be verbalize to "I".
However I do verbalize my thoughts when I read things for pleasure, when I want to induce the feelings the author is trying to instill inside of me. But I do not do that for fact gathering, as I read for facts in the PhotoReading style [still learning it], of just letting the subconcious do all the thinking by not making it verbalize its thoughts to me.
So affirmations are good way to become more concious, to become aware that you can control your thoughts, make them become positive, and perhaps learn to just not use the slow verbal ones at all. And they remain effective in easing major transitions of behavior. But then they loose their perceived effectiveness when you don't need more motivation, or you are able to induce the state that was caused by the affirmation manually, or that you are just in the state that the affirmation help to get you into. And that after you have done the transition, then you are able to work instantly, but that you can still drain yourself mentally by just being so productive, so then it becomes a case of learning how to still be able to think effectively even when large parts of your mind become fatigued. And then yes, after you've maximized your ability to think effectively with low energy, then you look to external ways, not depending on your thought patterns, to increase it, such as by eating correctly, maintaining physical fitness, sleeping correctly, being hydrated, and just managing how not to totally fry out your brain from thinking too hard for too long.