Why affirmations/self-promises don’t work
There was a girl who was reading an article about mental health that used ‘affirmations’ as a powerful tool to boost your mental health. one of the affirmations mentioned was ‘There is no impact of external world on me’. She got inspired by this affirmation and decided to use this in her daily routine. She used to start her mornings with this affirmation and started to feel good about herself. She used to spend her day ‘hoping’ there will be NO impact of the external world on her. However, after trying this for another week she realized that something is not working. She was getting impacted in spite of this affirmation. She started spending more time thinking about these affirmations. As a result, she started believing “affirmations are not useful – they simply don’t work”
‘Affirmations’ play profound role in spiritual or transformation journey. It also plays a catalyst role in the formation of belief system. ‘Language’ plays an influential role in your affirmations. If your affirmations have a language that is ‘far away’ from the reality and at superficial level, it will only give you a ‘feel good’ factor that wont last for long.
In the example mentioned above, “No impact of the external world” is a language that gives you superficial feel good factor but in reality, and daily living, it affects us in many ways:
- Super power to STOP external impact
We cannot stop the impact on us. In fact, ‘no impact’ is also an impact. There is a myth that such kind of affirmations will give us a superpower to STOP the impact. In reality, instead of hoping to stop the impact, how about developing the ability to deal with the impact.
Hence, your affirmations need to include the ‘ability’ element instead of stopping the impact altogether.
- Experience of pleasant impact
We live emotions every day, irrespective of what happens around us, it impacts us in some or other way. Affirmations don’t understand the ‘context’. E.g.: mind will assume to learn to STOP all kinds of impact (which is anyways not real). By such vague affirmations, we as human beings are missing on wonderful experiences of life.
What about the impacts that has made you happy, successful, joyful? What about the impact of fear, anger, sadness? By vague affirmations, you are discounting beautiful experiences that makes you a ‘human’.
Its crucial to understand power of affirmations/self-promises lies in the language and the intent. The clearer you are while building your affirmations, the more profound impact you will experience!
Love
Supriya
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