Reversing Negative Affirmations In the Moment

Well, I didn't plan on writing another post today, but as I was out for a walk, literally just about 30 minutes ago, I had another chance to practice what I'm calling "Turning Around Negative Affirmations on the Fly" or "Catching" them when they spontaneously pop in the mind.

So, as I was out for a walk with two dogs, and the irony of this is that the weather today could not be more spectacular, I "caught" myself saying this:

"I can't take this anymore!"

Now, what this referred to literally, was the annoyance one of the dogs was causing on the walk. The details don't matter. But as I thought about it some more, I realized the statement did refer to some other things in my life that were more general annoyances. But nothing that was earth shattering, or for that matter that 99% of the population doesn't have to deal with too.

In some ways that's what makes this kind of a negative affirmation so destructive. Because it can be born from something small and end up, through its negative vibratory, negative emotional patterns, building like a snowball and causing really big problems in your life.

That's why you got to nip them in the bud. So I proceeded to think about how to turn this negative "program" around. And this brings up a good practical point that may be helpful to you in this exercise: Sometimes, such as in this case, there's no one particular word that you can find an antonym for. In these cases, when all else fails, you just literally have to turn the statement around to it's exact opposite:

"I can take this evermore!" 

Now at first, one might think, such a statement in the face of an annoyance is merely an acquiesence, being weak and accepting. But when you say it with real feeling, it's quite the contrary: It strengthens you and energizes you! That's because you can literally feel a sort of "shake up" or "wake up" going on down in the Subconscious where the old way of doing things has caused complicity and stagnation of what would normally be a dynamic, energizing Psychic flow. What's fun and most effective is to say this to yourself, out loud if you can, with positive emotional feeling. You'll immediately break the chain. You'll immediately feel better. And what's more, the spirit will often gift you with "some extra sugar on top" meaning a couple of more postitive statements that accentuate and vivify the main statement. For me, at that moment, they were these:

"I can take this evermore! I'm loving every minute of it. It's like paradise all the time!" 

Can you imagine how I felt after that? I lot different, that's for sure! And a whole lot better. Did it make the dog in question stop what she was doing (stopping every few steps to sniff, sniff, sniff!)?
No.

But it sure did make me relax, allow the spirit to flow through me, rise above the situation, and see the big picture.

This brings up another point. When Affirmations can have an immediate effect, it's almost like a cherry on top, because the bigger point or effect this practice is having is this:

They are building to a crescendo, to a tipping point, rather like grains of sand on a scale, and when that last grain makes the scale "tip," i.e., your dominant thought, paradigm, and emotional vibration become positive, you're whole life will change.  

Turning Around Negative Affirmations on the Fly

This may be the most important therapy or "modality" in using affirmations as therapy: what I call "turning them around on the fly" or "catching them in action" when they spontaneously "pop" into your mind.

The reason this works is because there is a symbiotic, or more plainly, "see-saw," relationship between your results, or your present reality, and your thoughts. They depend on each other for survival.

Although it doesn't feel like it, in the moment, if you stop the negative thought in its tracks, what you are doing is cutting off the oxygen supply to the negative feeling and negative behavior that caused it.

In yesterday's blog post I used the example of turning around, "Yes, because I'm an idiot!" in this:

I am a genius. I am a very smart person. I always do what is best for me in any given situation, and I make my life work!

Now, at the moment I "caught" this, I really did feel like an idiot. And my behavior was also idiotic. (Listening to negative news instead of meditating as I had intended.) But the important principle to remember is this subconscious will accept anything you tell it as being true, and that it's the dominant thoughts in your subconscious that are determining your behavior and feelings. They're running the show.

Here's another real life example that happened to me today. I've been working hard at losing weight beginning a couple of weeks ago. I got on the scale this morning, and I had gained half a pound! Immediately I felt and caught my mind saying:

This is so frustrating!

So, I Googled and found the Antonym for the word "Frustrating." It is "pleasing." Also, "helpful and facilitating" are antonyms in the other sense of the word. So, I wrote, actually I voice dictated into my iPhone these phrases:

This is so pleasing! This new way of thinking, this new way of being, this new way of life is so pleasing! It's so helpful and facilitating. It's so helpful and facilitating to turn around negative affirmations into positive ones because the subconscious mind accepts whatever you tell it. 

Now, one may say, "Well, aren't you affirming the negative and so keeping the negative alive?" No, what you are doing is putting yourself in a new, higher vibratory state, which will have a postive affect on your behaviour and feelings going forward. And your future results will reflect that.

As you practice this therapy and put them in your notes, you will gradually build up an Affirmation Script. This leads to the second modality of Affirmation therapy: Reading out loud or listening to an entire Affirmation script being read to you. Here's a neat trick: if you have an iPhone, you can tell Siri: Read this note, and she'll read the note back to you. While not perfect, it is fun, and effective, to have her or any other type of Text to Speech (TTS) application read this scripts back to you. And you can also create your own recordings. It's therapy in and of itself to create them, but also sense Repitition is such a key principle in Subconscious Therapy, it's important to have some kind of recording that you can listen to as often as possible, especially when you are driving or brushing your teeth for example.

Why Affirmations Work

• It makes no difference whether we believe it or not. The brain simply believes what you tell it most." - Shad Helmstetter from his book "The Self-Talk Solution" pg.
• Your emotions are controlled byt the thoughts that you entertain. Whatever is impressed upon the subconscious controls the vibratory rate of the body. 
• Your subconscious mind has no ability to think. It cannot choose. It cannot reject. It must accept.
• Your subconscious mind will accept anything.
• Whatever goes into the subconscious mind must be expressed through the body. It cannot differentiate between what it real and what is imagined.
• Whatever goes into the subconscious mind repetitively gets fixed there. It's what we call a "conditioned" mind.

That first principle was written by Shad Helmstetter. Those last five were spoken by Bob Proctor. Bob sometimes refers to the Subconscious Mind as your "Paradigm" or your "Emotional" mind. Have you ever noticed in your own life that you may decide to do something, but that you don't do it? And then you ask yourself why you didn't do it, even though you had made a deliberate decision. That's because your conscious mind had one thought, and your subconscious, your paradigm, had another. And your subconscious mind runs the show. It dominates your actions. Which lead to your results.

The conscious mind is where we experience our life, where we watch "our movie" so to speak. The subconscious mind, however is writing, producing, and directing the script. It's really the one in charge.

If you have a subconscious mind that is working against you, it can be reprogrammed. It takes time. Just like losing weight or learning a new language takes time. Learning a new language may be the best metaphor because when you practice turning old negative thoughts into new positive ones, you really are "learning a new language"! That's for sure.

There are many therapies for reconditioning your paradigm. Some involve listening to recordings. Some involve reading "scripts" of the right kind of language. Some involve making your own recordings and scripts. Another type of therapy is when you are simply living your life like you normally would, but you become aware and catch yourself whenever you find yourself saying, either internally or out loud, a statement that is negative, that is putting you down or otherwise working against you.

Here's a perfect example: Today I intended to meditate. I did mediate for about an hour, and I felt great, but then I stopped. Because of all the negative news, it was almost like I couldn't help myself, I turned on a couple hours of negative talk radio.

As I knew I was doing the wrong thing, or at least something I didn't want to do, I caught my internal voice saying, "I know because I'm such an idiot!"

Now putting the behaviour aside for a second, think about the statement as a program for my Subconscious, emotional mind. I may have been doing the wrong thing, but the "program" was only reinforcing the unwanted behaviour!
At that moment what I should have done, no matter how I felt in the present, was turn that statement around to it's opposite to something like this:

I am a genius. I am a very smart person. I always do what is best for me in any given situation, and I make my life work.

What's most effective is to say this statement, this new positive affirmation out loud and with feeling. Make it a fun game. Almost like those fun games you played as a kid in the back seat on a road trip where you tried to point out the cars with one head light out. Make a game out of catching your negative affirmations and turning them around to their opposite. You'll immediately feel better. You may even laugh, and you'll be taking an important step towards long term re-conditioning of the master controller of your life: your Subconscious Mind.