The Top 5 Affirmation Pitfalls

These 5 affirmation pitfalls can prevent you from breaking old habits and stepping toward your dream. Make sure you are avoiding these common barriers to manifesting a positive new life.

1. Affirming with words that do not promote feelings. Emotion is energy, and energy is what puts thought into action. Feelings are an amazing motivator. They are the catalyst to change beliefs. If your affirmation is just words and while you say it you simultaneously think, “That can never happen,” it will never happen. The goal with every affirmation is to feel the feelings you will feel when it becomes reality.
   

   Live the joy, the love, the pride now. Let the feeling overtake you. Smile. Choose words for your affirmations that immediately shift your emotions.

2. Your affirmations are in future tense. The statement, “Someday life will be great,” encourages a sense of hope. Hope is an emotion you have when you want something better than you have right now. If you feel hope when you say an affirmation, you will manifest hope. Hope keeps our dreams one step ahead of where we are now. By changing the affirmation to, “I am thankful for my life,” you change the feeling from hope to present blessings and gratitude. Feeling prosperous and grateful will open your awareness to situations and resources that can make your reality one where you are grateful for your prosperity.

3. Not saying affirmations. In the past, I have gone through periods where I become apathetic to the power of my mind. I indulge in the drama of my situation without paying attention to changing it. Affirmations are powerful, but you have to consistently use them. We train our minds through repetition. Saying an affirmation once and wondering why nothing happened does not change life. Reality shifts when you have created beliefs strong enough that you feel, each day, that you are living a new life.

4. Not taking action. There are really two pitfalls rolled into one here. First, sometimes I find that I become so engrossed in reading about personal development and mind power that I forget to practice them. I keep “preparing” for the moment when I am ready to take action and change my life, but the moment never seems to come. This is really an avoidance strategy that our minds use to try to protect the status quo. This is driven by fear and can be addressed by using the affirmation: “I am willing to change.” Even if we think that the new life we imagine will be perfect, change can be scary and we tend to avoid scary things. By simply being willing to change, you soften the fear associated with plunging into the unknown.

   The second aspect of not taking action has to do with trust. After focusing on an affirmation, as your thoughts and beliefs shift, you may feel the urge to take action toward your dream. This is where you have got to get off your rear and do something. The most powerful way to change reality is through action in the physical. Trust the feelings you are getting toward action and act. This is going with the flow, following your intuition, manifesting your dreams.

   When our intentions involve creating something, we actually have to create it. When I visualized this website, I was keying up the motivation to work on it and to attract the ideas and words that would make it successful. Do not fool yourself into thinking that if you want to write a book you will wake up one day and have it written and on the best sellers list. Affirmations make taking action easier, but action is still required.

5. Doubt. Affirmations are all about faith. Faith in the unknown. Faith that our thoughts have power. Faith that we can handle any challenges presented to us. Faith in timing. Faith that we are heard. You can read all of the techniques, say the right words, feel emotion, but if you doubt that this process works, all you'll be manifesting is more doubt.

   Have you ever questioned the way you affirm or visualize? “If I had said my affirmations last night, if I had just said it this way, if I had felt more emotion during that visualization, etc…” By not trusting that whatever words and emotions are put forth will lead to something positive, doubt becomes the dominant feeling which will only keep you stuck.

   The truth is, you can affirm any which way you want as long as you consistently feel positive feelings. It is the positive energy that pushes us toward a brighter reality.

   Our outer reality and behavior is constantly in flux, shifting to match our inner reality. If you know something to be true within, it will become true. That is it, that is the secret. Believe, trust, know.