What are Positive Affirmations?

Positive affirmations are short, positive statements or thoughts that describe something that you want to achieve or how you want to feel. They are used to challenge and replace negative thoughts and beliefs with positive, self-serving thoughts and beliefs.

Positive affirmations that are frequently repeated can reprogram your brain with new thought and behavior patterns. They can help you change the way you think and feel about things.  They can help you overcome undesirable traits and negative habits and thought patterns by instructing your body and mind to act in a new way. According to Remez Sasson, positive affirmations that are repeated over and over "impress our subconscious mind and trigger it into a positive action. This is because our subconscious mind always accepts, and follows what we tell it.  So why not choose positive statements?"

Your feelings, emotions, and beliefs directly influence both your conscious and subconscious thoughts. If you have been struggling with your weight for some time, chances are you have developed a negative mindset. When you look into a mirror, you may not like what you see. You may feel doubtful that you will ever be able to lose and maintain a healthy weight.  And if you are like many others, you may be afraid that you will fail, again.

If you continue to focus on how unhappy you are with your body and your inability to lose weight, then you will continue to get the same disappointing results.  In order to receive the results that you want, you must change your internal dialogue to support what you want to attract into your life and NOT what you don't want attract. In other words, if you want a healthy body, then you must affirm this desire with the messages that you give yourself.  For example, a positive affirmation might be "I am in control of my eating", "I have the courage to change" or "I deserve to have a healthy body".

In the Law of Attraction Section, we discussed how you attract into your life what you think about.  You can change your life by changing your thoughts.  When you have positive thoughts, you can attract more of what you want.  If you want more health, think about health.  If you want to be thin, think about how much you love your body and how great you will feel when you achieve your weight goal.

Positive affirmations are all about the power of positive thinking and your ability to change your mental outlook to attract what you want to achieve.  If you want to change your results, then you must change your mindset and eliminate negative thoughts and feelings.  You must reprogram your subconscious mind with positive thoughts and beliefs that support your goals and desires.  Positive affirmations do work.  You must be willing to embrace change and come to terms with your past.

The Benefits of Positive Affirmations

Regardless of where you are in life, positive affirmations can better your situation and help you achieve your goals and aspirations.  One of the key benefits of positive affirmations is that they facilitate change. Positive affirmations are self suggestions that leverage the power of positive thinking to counter negative thought patterns with more constructive thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and self images.  You can use positive affirmations to improve your self esteem and confidence, achieve your ambitions, and to reprogram your mindset in order to eliminate negative thoughts and behaviors that can derail you from achieving what you want in life.

Positive Affirmations and Weight Management

Positive affirmations can facilitate your weight management efforts .  In order to achieve your weight management goals, you will need to make changes in your life.  You will need to replace your eating and exercise habits with new habits that are more conducive to a healthy life style.  Will this be easy? Absolutely not, but positive affirmations can help you mentally prepare for and embrace these changes. According to psychology, your mind controls your body.  Thus, taking control of your spirit and mind are imperative to obtaining and keeping a healthy body.  Positive affirmations can help you control and re-shape your thoughts.  They can keep you focused on your inner goals.  Use positive affirmations to see reality as you want it to be, and it shall be.

Using Positive Affirmations

Positive affirmation is a powerful tool that you can use to reprogram your subconscious mind, which in turn reprograms your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to support you inner goals.  By creating positive statements that you repeat frequently on a daily basis, you start to build new thought patterns in your mind that keep you focused on what it is that you want to achieve.  You create your own affirmations and with practice, these affirmations will become part of your daily life.  It is important to create affirmations in the correct manner in order to maximize results.  Use the following guidelines to create your own positive affirmations:

• Good affirmations should begin with your clear thoughts of what you want to manifest in your life.
  
• Create positive affirmations that are short and easy to remember. 

Use action words that invoke positive imagery and that appeal to your mind and your senses.

• Make the affirmation meaningful to you.
  
• Begin your affirmations with "I".

The more you personalize your affirmations, they more they will resonate with you and provide a positive impact.

• Create affirmations in the present tense to give it more power.  Avoid  words such as: shall, will, could and would.
  

For example: "I love my healthy body" or "I choose to make healthy choices".

 
Use your affirmations regularly and consistently for at least 30 days.

According to Dr. Maxwell Maltz, "it usually takes between 21 and 30 days to make perceptive changes in one's mental image.  For some it may take even longer."

• Try to spend at least 5 to 10 minutes every day repeating your affirmations.  Repetition facilitates learning.
  

Write them down on note cards and read or say them to yourself repeatedly.  You may also want to write your affirmations repeatedly in a journal.

• Be sure to state your affirmations with focus, conviction, and passion.
  

As you recite your affirmations, make sure that you have a clear vision of what your affirmation brings you.  Create a picture of yourself realizing the affirmations as they come to fruition.

Feel and experience the affirmation as you recite it.

• Do not create affirmations that cause you emotional stress.
  
• Act as if your positive affirmations are already working and yielding positive results.
  

• Don't sabotage your efforts with negative thoughts.  Accept negative thoughts and feelings that you may have for what they are - just negative thoughts.  Observe them and let them float out of your mind without any further attention.  Redirect your attention by repeating one of your positive affirmations.
  
• Add the power and positive energy of God or your Higher Being to your affirmations.

Sources:

The Power of Affirmations, by Remez Sasson

Affirmations, www.vitalaffirmations.com

Psycho Cybernetics, by Dr. Maxwell Matlz