2 – January 2
“Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much farther than people with vastly superior talent.”—Sophia Loren
Great inner drive is sustained by daily positive thoughts about yourself and your expectations for your future. Affirmations are designed to help you with this process, but they only work if you say them. Knowing about them isn’t the same as doing them.
When you make the commitment to practicing positive thinking on a daily basis, what affirmations should you use? You can use the affirmations in this book, collect them from other books, or write your own. Whichever you choose, make sure that they follow the three rules for creating affirmations:
- State affirmations in the present tense. Affirmations must be stated in the present tense, such as “I am prosperous” or “I am rich and wonderful” because if you put them in the future tense, “I’m going to be rich” you will be creating a picture in your mind that someday you’ll be prosperous, but not now. You want to program prosperity for now, today—not someday. It’s like a sign posted at a bar: “Free Beer Tomorrow.” When does the customer get free beer?
- State affirmations in the positive. When you speak your affirmations, you are giving instructions to your subconscious mind. Neuro-linguistic programming has determined that the subconscious has no picture for “not,” “don’t” and other negative qualifiers. For example, if I tell you, “Don’t think about pink elephants, don’t see the little baby pink elephant with its trunk curled around its mama pink elephant’s tail,” I’m sure you are picturing pink elephants in your mind right now. You can’t help it. So, when you create an affirmation, say “I always have plenty of money in my bank account” rather than “I’m not going to be overdrawn on my bank account again.” Picture what you want instead of what you don’t want or you’ll be giving power to the wrong thing.
- Be specific. A photographer friend of mine told me how much she wanted to go to Greece. She thought a great way to get there would be if she was paid to go, by getting a photography assignment there. Excited by the concept, she started doing affirmations for this trip daily: “I have a photography assignment in Athens! I have a photography assignment in Athens!” Four months later, she received the call—she had her assignment for a photo shoot in Athens. Athens, Georgia. Oops. Make sure you state exactly what it is you want.
Today’s Affirmation:
“I always have plenty of money!”
I have to admit that I was skeptical about affirmations to begin with. Just a little niggling thought in my head kept snarking, “That’s magical thinking, Chellie. That can’t really work.”
And I thought that as long as I didn’t actually DO them. Funny how nothing much ever works if you don’t put it into practice…but every successful person I’ve ever seen, talked to, read about, has said that positive thinking not only works, but is required if you want to be successful.
One year, while on a Christmas shopping trip with my sisters, I actually found that sign “Free beer tomorrow”! Pretty funny, since I had been telling the story about it for years. I bought it, of course.
One of the reasons I designed this book as a page-a-day book was to promote the idea that affirmations needed to be practiced on a daily basis. Did you know the average person has about 60,000 thoughts a day? Studies have shown that 95% of your thoughts are the same thoughts you had yesterday (not a whole lot of new, creative thinking going on), and 80% of them are negative.
If you think negatively about your chances of success, chances are you won’t take any action to get it. But if you think positively, you’ll get out and try something – take a class, do research, ask a questions – and your actions will likely lead to something positive happening.
