Each morning and evening without fail, the dapper Frenchman Emile Coué recited the following words exactly: “Every day in every way I’m feeling better and better.” That was in the early 1920s after a gruesome war. Coué distilled the optimistic attitude of his time: “The Great War is behind us. From now on it’s all going to get better.” His life indeed became better and he let other people know about his program of “optimistic autosuggestion”. Coué had clients for whom he tailor-made daily affirmations of things getting better. In the Roaring Twenties, things did get better and better. Until 1929 … the Depression, World War II …
Fifty years later, Louise Hay revealed her secret affirmations, dozens of them suited to the situation: your back hurts, your heart hurts, your bank account hurts. She added in her diagnosis of what caused your symptoms. If your back hurt, it meant you were feeling unsupported by the world. Louise Hay suggested you recite: “I know that life always supports me.” Then your back symptoms would go away. People would press her pamphlet (later a best-selling book) into the hands of friends as the miracle ingredient that turned things around for them.
The most recent tidal wave of affirmation recommendations has come from The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, first as an Internet video, then as a movie and book. In the film the “secret” is depicted as some kind of written formula hidden in a torch-lit temple in classical times, perhaps ancient Greece, perhaps Egypt. Violent warriors are coming to steal The Secret, implying they’ve found out about it and want its power. They kill the temple keepers, but too late — one of the protectors has made off with The Secret formula or symbols that give power without limit and that lineage has found the light of day in The Secret.
There have been others. Our parents read Norman Vincent Peale (The Power of Positive Thinking) and Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich). Machaelle Small Wright thought about a pile of manure for her Garden and next morning there it was; in Behaving as if the God in All Life Mattered and her Perelandra Centre, she invites others to do the same. A recent book, The Richest Man in China, depicts this richest man speaking the exact same words that Emile Coué devised 90 years ago, crediting it as the key to his success. The author, Louis Petrossi, mysteriously explained that this book was fiction based on fact and that Coué’s affirmation was core.
The Secret that The Secret reveals is not really a secret, of course, although each of the authors we’ve named claim to have discovered something unknown to anyone else. The common theme is this: “Ask and ye shall receive”, a promise from the Christian bible. Create an affirmation and it will come true.
How affirmations work
Our minds are very attentive to what we say about the world and how we formulate our goals. When we declare an intention actively and confidently, we can change our situation. There is definitely magic in it. Placebo pills work this way, with the implicit statement, “This is going to make me better.” We change the water of our own being into wine simply by saying it is wine.
There are three main characteristics:
- An affirmation has certainty. It feels like a pillar of conviction, making us stand straighter and taller. You say it with passion and power.
- An affirmation aligns with one’s own being. You feel its appropriateness for the situation in your life, in the moment or in this chapter of life.
- An affirmation has a kind of magnetic force that attracts universal energy to create the affirmation as true.
Robert Fritz’s book The Path of Least Resistance imagined the affirmation as a pillar strongly set into the earth of our consciousness, which pulled our sorry state to itself as by a rubber band. Our experience is more like turning water into wine from the inside. In either case, you move from the glass half empty to the glass half full, to “my cup runneth over”.
Why affirmations don’t work
You read in the newspaper that the winner of the last lottery looked in the mirror every morning and said, “I’m going to win the lottery!” Lo and behold, maybe strong intentions do work. Then you realise that several million people were saying the same thing and all but one of them were wrong.
Each of us has a history of stating intentions that haven’t eventuated. Our patience has been tried and has broken. We can ignore the dismal facts of the present situation for so long. After a while we don’t believe our own convictions. Maybe we’re not wishing for the right thing? Let’s try again … and again …
Fairly soon in life you get the notion that goals are useless, with the added twist that you feel you don’t deserve what you ask for. You think of something you’d like to have happen and, before you can even formulate it, exceptions arise, dozens of them: self-accusations, internal mockery at wanting such a thing, the litany of your history of failures. These we can call distractions.
The truth is that affirmations do indeed function, and need to function, but we have to become wiser about the forces at work.
Two types of affirmations
To help you have success in using affirmations, you have to distinguish two types:
“This is what I’d like to have.”
“This is what I’d like to feel.”
“This is what I’d like to have.”
The thrust of The Secret is to get the things you want; it gives several examples of getting the house, the car, the job, the spouse — all the things you want.
Let’s say you want a particular $5 million-dollar house. This is an example from The Secret, in which the guy got the specific house he dreamed of. He shares with you how you can get the big house you want. Is that really what you want? Is it that particular house? Beyond the difficult issue of more than one person wanting that house, too often we see people who have wealth and possessions but who aren’t satisfied.
We in Western culture have been conditioned to think things will bring happiness. The sole purpose of advertising is to hypnotise the consumer into thinking the new car, the new clothes, the new gadgets, the new cosmetics will create happiness. We are not taught or mentored in the most valuable pursuit of all: the ability to control how we feel, from the inside out.
“This is what I’d like to feel.”
Isn’t equanimity more valuable, or positivity, or love streaming to you and through you? Isn’t that what you really want? The ability to be in charge of your emotional state is one of the greatest creative resources available to you. We are all conditioned to feel that someone or something outside of us is responsible for our happiness, our peace of mind or our wellbeing. You find true success in affirmation technology when you take full responsibility to create the state of mind, heart and body you intend. We often suggest to people that they land on one simple affirmation they will work with daily until it is noticeable how that statement has changed their experience.
The one David has used to great benefit is, “I live and love fully in the present.” Lila’s has been, “I’m happy here, living free.” These affirmations are terrific responses when facing an experience that is perhaps not ideal. For instance, Lila used to hate being caught in traffic or standing in long lines. Now, when that happens, as it tends to in cities, she uses this affirmation to reconnect with a positive spin rather than go down the established pattern of irritation. When you can stop the habitual neural pathway from engaging and change the program by inserting the chosen affirmation, suddenly the experience can dramatically shift. There are beautiful things to notice when standing in a queue.
This kind of shift is not “magical thinking” in a superficial way. Rather, you practise shifting a reality from something that irritates you on a regular basis to an experience of joy and freedom. This very helpful skill can be learned.
It is possible to change the filter of your beliefs so you encounter the challenges of life with a sense of joy and openness. You can locate the recurring events that create irritation in your life. By composing one simple statement, and committing to use it on a daily basis, an entire shift of attitude is possible.
Consider for a moment what that irritating circumstance is for you. Then compose a simple, positive “I statement” and tape it to your bathroom mirror and on the dashboard of your car. Refer to it, read it, repeat it: change the habit pattern and create the affirmation that will bring you more joy and happiness, regardless of the outer circumstances.
Defusing the distractions
What about those distractions? You must first notice where they are hiding. For example, scientists wished to study the effectiveness of prayer to deal with recovery rates from open-heart surgery. They randomly assigned surgery patients to two groups, a control group and one where others would pray for them. The ones who prayed focused on the individual patient from the second group, saying, “May recovery for so-and-so be quick without any complications.” Can you spot the white elephant in the room?
Be very careful about the affirmations you say without thinking. Negatives confuse the mind and undermine the strong confidence necessary in a potent affirmation. “Without complications” is like “no worries” and “not a problem” — they fail as helpful affirmations.
Distractions sneak into most affirmations initially. You must discover where there are beliefs that are LOUDER than your chosen affirmation. Rather than hide them, you give them a voice. If your chosen affirmation is “I am at peace” and you find yourself very angry, you don’t just keep saying “I am at peace” and ignore the anger. You find a safe way to feel the anger and release it in an intentional and non-harmful way that does not involve blasting another person. It might be that you growl or hit a pillow on the bed or do 10 push-ups. One approach is to let the anger get really big, bigger than it feels. When you flail your arms and shout your anger, it all suddenly seems ridiculous. Humour wins the day. Then choose to return your attention to your affirmation.
Start small. Forget the intention “I’m going to win the lottery.” Sure, buy the ticket, then smile and be open. Don’t set yourself up for failure by wanting a particular thing. Aim your affirmations at your own state of being: “Every day in every way, I’m feeling better and better.”
Simple steps to crafting and enacting an affirmation
Let’s review some of the basic steps in crafting effective affirmations.
1. Choose a feeling or state of being you desire rather than a list of possessions.
2. Make the statement in the first person, present tense: “I am joyful” or “I am at peace” or “I am satisfied with my job.”
3. Start more simply with something that is a constant and repeating irritation to you and craft the statement that will counter the irritability. “I enjoy life” might be an appropriate affirmation for someone who has a tendency to feel depressed.
4. Engage in creative explorations to shift the pattern, even in small ways. If you are someone who experiences depression, and “I enjoy life” is your chosen affirmation, consider simple actions: say the affirmation and walk out of your way to smell a rose. Or stand where you can watch children play, and feel the joy they feel as they swing or run or laugh.
5. Keep the affirmation short and to the point initially and use only one or two to start with, addressing the repeating situation that most drains your creativity.
6. When you feel you have had a success with a simple affirmation, you can move onto more involved statements. You want to know you can feel the difference between saying an affirmation and creating the affirmation.
7. Become aware of what distractions arise when you say the affirmation, and find creative and playful ways to give attention to the distraction, even exaggerating it. You say “I am at peace”, then anger rises, so you stamp your foot and act very angry. Then you return to “I am at peace”, said with confidence and alignment. If you still feel angry, you stamp your foot several times or jump up and down and growl, then return your attention to “I am at peace.” Eventually, the peaceful state becomes louder than anger. You have just created a shift in your state of feeling.
David Tresemer, PhD, and Lila Sophia Tresemer are authors of One-Two-ONE: A Guidebook for Conscious Partnerships, Weddings, and Rededication Ceremonies, wherein they discuss vows as a kind of affirmation. They live on Flinders Island, Tasmania, at the MountainSeas Community.
