Why Affirmations Aren’t Just Wishful Thinking: How to Transform Your Inner Dialogue

[Barb Nangle]

I know sometimes people gag when they hear the term “affirmations.” I get it. You can’t just sit around saying “I’m rich” and get rich. That’s not what affirmations are for. They’re for clearing up the negative stuff that’s often swirling in the background of our minds – often for decades.

I wasn’t even aware I had negative self-talk until I was in my late 20’s. I was reading When Food Is Love by Geneen Roth (yes, I was a compulsive overeater even back then, but I didn’t know it). She wrote out some of the negative things her clients said to themselves and when I saw those words on the page I thought, “Oh my God! I say that shit to myself all the time!!!”

I wasn’t even aware all that negativity was playing in the background. I felt like I liked myself and had high self-esteem. I thought, “I guess I have a dual self-image.” I think that’s true for many of us. There are a couple of sayings in 12-step recovery that reflect that experience. One is, “I’m an egomaniac with an inferiority complex” and the other is “I’m the piece of shit that the world revolves around.” So I’m not alone in that. given that there’s more than one saying to describe the experience.

If you’ve spent decades telling yourself what a piece of shit you are, and you want your life to improve, you’re going to have to spend some time replacing those negative thoughts. The replacement thoughts are called affirmations because they’re affirmative, rather than negative.

 

“A negative mind will never give you a positive life.”

 

Think about it – if you’ve walked around thinking “I’m not enough” or “I’ll never catch up” or “I can never do anything right” how could you possibly feel like enough, caught up, or like you’ve done something right when these “programs” are playing in the background all the time?!

I’ve been saying affirmations of various kinds for years, and what’s really cool is when they become my “go-to” thoughts. Here’s an example from my life. Unlike most people in recovery who have low self-esteem and think they’re not enough, I tend to be grandiose and arrogant.

I don’t want to have those thoughts, I just do. I really think it’s just the opposite side of the coin of low self-esteem. Instead of not enough, I think “I’m too much.” It’s just another way of saying I’m not the right amount of something. There’s something wrong with me.

For me, the game changer in regard to that particular negative thought was when I was in a Y12SR class (Yoga for 12-Step Recovery) and the teacher took us through an exercise to help us determine our “Sankalpa.” Sankalpa is a Sanskrit word which means an intention or resolution. It’s a vow and commitment we make to support our highest truth. She asked us to write down, in a short phrase, the major issue that has plagued you for most of your life.

For me, it was “I’m too much.” We were then asked to come up with a phrase, a Sankalpa, that is the opposite of that short phrase that had plagued us forever. I fiddled with it for a while, and eventually, it morphed into “I’m just the right amount of everything.” Game changer!!!

When I first came up with it, I said it all the time. Now, I hardly ever say it because I’ve deeply internalized this notion. That is, it’s shifted from something I think to something I believe. And that, my friends, is magic. ✨ 

 

Beliefs are thoughts you’ve been thinking so long you eventually come to accept them as true: You believe them.

 

Every time I was in a situation where I felt the need to back off, become small, or not share what was really going on with me, I said to myself “I’m just the right amount of everything.” After saying it very regularly, even when I was not feeling like too much, and as part of my morning routine, I eventually came to believe it. I realized that for some people, I am too much. And guess what? Those are not my people! They get to not be my people, and I don’t need to make it mean anything about me. No one gets to decide how much “enoughness” anyone can or “should” be.

Going from negative thoughts to affirmations is a process. It takes time. You weren’t born thinking you’re not enough or too much, you were programmed! It’s time to change that programming and it’s going to take a while. 

What’s required is that we be persistent with our affirmative statements. You don’t have to believe your affirmation statements at first, you just have to keep saying them. If you simply won’t allow yourself to be consistent because you can’t believe the new statements, you can scaffold your thoughts. That is, you can go from a negative statement to a neutral statement, then eventually to a positive statement. 

Here's an example:

Negative: I’m always broke
Neutral: I have some money
Positive: Money flows to me easily and effortlessly from expected and unexpected sources.

If you simply will not repeat positive statements about things like money, then you can scaffold your way to something from something neutral from something negative.

Ask-firmations: a new kind of affirmation

I was recently introduced to the concept of “ask-firmations” by a client. The idea is that, instead of making affirmative statements, you ask yourself good questions. They’re essentially affirmations in the form of a question. I’ve also heard this called Lofty Questions of Vishen Lakhiani, the founder of Mind Valley. 

My take on why these work is this: ask shitty questions, get shitty answers. Ask good questions, and get good answers. If you keep asking, “Why can’t I ever get things right?” you’ll search for answer to that question. But if you start asking questions like, “Why am I continually getting things right?” your subconscious mind will go about the job of searching for answers. As it’s said, “Seek and ye shall find.” When you look for good things, you’ll find good things. When you look for shitty things, you’ll find shitty things. This is why a gratitude practice is so helpful in turning your mind and your life around. You look for good things and find them.

If you’d like to start on some affirmations, you can listen to this podcast episode for a whole bunch, or you can listen to some askfirmations I created for people who are working on their boundaries.

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