Create your Destiny

Affirmations are tools used to align the focus of your unconscious mind with your conscious desires. Inside our heads mental chatter takes place almost continuously, and deciding to use affirmations is simply making a decision to take control of that chatter and turn it in your favor.

Some types of affirmations work better than others and some don’t work at all. The good news is that there are certain ways of structuring affirmations that do work and can mentally prepare you to experience significant positive changes in your life. Here are some helpful tips on how I believe that affirmations can be used successfully.

Begin by Accepting What Is

This is an essential concept in making any type of positive change. Repeating things like “I am outrageously wealthy” when you’re dead broke or saying to yourself that “I can be the world’s best jockey” when you’re 6’7” is only going to set off your internal BS meter and leave you with a nasty case of cognitive dissonance. Affirmations rooted in denial are as effective as putting a new dress on an old Billy Goat. Underneath the dress there’s still a goat and everybody knows it.

Choose the Right Frame

If the new idea you desire to cement into your mind is too far fetched from your current reality consider starting your affirmation with phrases like “I am becoming” or “I am choosing to”. This demonstrates to your unconscious mind both your commitment to and the intent of your ultimate outcome and avoids setting off your BS meter.

For example, you might want to choose the affirmation “Each new day I am choosing to eat a healthier diet” instead of “I am a healthy eater”. Doing so will make the occasional empty bucket of Ben & Jerry’s on the nightstand a bit easier to overlook.

You may also choose to affirm that “I am becoming more organized each and every day” instead of “I am an extremely organized person”, especially if you happen to be repeating it while shuffling your feet through a pile of dirty clothes on the floor of your bedroom.

The Great “I am”

Choose this powerful affirmation starter by itself without qualification when you are affirming something that already exists to some degree that you simply desire to reinforce. For example, if you are a decent public speaker and can present without fear or hesitation, an affirmation like “I am energetic and friendly when up on stage” won’t clash with your current reality and can help cement in place your desired way of thinking.

Effective Affirmations Contain Strong Emotions

This is absolutely key. Using affirmations without emotion is utterly useless even if you’ve followed all of the advice to this point. Your unconscious mind has a lot to remember and it is much easier for it to recall information that was filed away with strong emotions attached.

Every thought to this point in your life has been stored away in your unconscious mind, with more weight given to thoughts based on the emotions attached rather than the chronological order in which the events occurred. That’s why it’s easier to remember significant events from your childhood than what it was you had for dinner last Tuesday (unless it was really good).

Repetition is Necessary to Cement the Desired Concepts into Your Unconscious Mind

You mind often has to hear a new concept over and over again in order for it to sink in. Our minds are bombarded with thousands of ideas each day and the ones that are going to stick are the ones repeated often enough with significant emotion attached. I recommend that you develop a pattern of saying your most important affirmations first thing in the morning and then again just before you go to sleep.

Back up Affirmations with Action

Affirmations are great tools to prepare your mind towards the pathways of success. Practically, they can improve your focus and replace a lot of the limiting beliefs and junk that tends to hold you back. But they are of no use if not followed up with definite action.

Affirmations without action are like cars without wheels. You can have the best design in the world but you aren’t going to get anywhere. Once you obtain the belief system that allows you to succeed it’s time to hit the road and start making things happen.

Summary

If you are going to utilize affirmations to help facilitate change in your life you will want to phrase them properly, attach strong positive emotions to them, repeat them frequently. and begin the process of bringing your new beliefs into reality by taking definite measurable steps toward their achievement.

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“The emotions of faith, love, and sex are the most powerful of all the major emotions.”

       -Napoleon Hill, author of “Think and Grow Rich”

The Importance of Emotion:

When it comes to manifesting our desires nothing is more important than the emotion we place behind our beliefs. Emotion is the catalyst that combines with the vibrations of thought to produce potent results. According to Napoleon Hill, emotions give thoughts “vitality, life, and action”. Positive emotions empower thought towards positive results, negative emotions fuel destructive thoughts, and the lack of emotion behind one’s beliefs often results in stagnation and confusion.

Why Faith is the Strongest Emotion:

Faith is an unshakeable belief in the outcome you have set for yourself. It firmly sets your expectations and thus influences your actions. Thinking that you desire to be rich, for example, sets up a vibrational frequency for that to take place. Fully believing that it WILL happen puts additional energy behind the thought and gives it added power. Conversely, desiring to become rich but believing that you can’t negates the impact of your desire and will prevent it from ever coming to pass.

Napoleon Hill calls faith the element which “transforms the ordinary vibration of thought, created by the finite mind of man, into the spiritual equivalent.” We live in a world where science, via quantum mechanics, is now telling us that perceptions do in fact create our reality. Thus it makes sense that having or lacking faith in our ability to bring forth our desires has a direct influence upon weather or not our desires will manifest. After all, what is faith but our impassioned perception of the way we believe things are going to turn out?

How to Build up Your Faith:

Our minds are constantly sending out vibrations, and the ones that have the greatest impact on our lives are the ones repeated the most and are infused with the most faith. Napoleon Hill’s recommendation is that we utilize repetition of thoughts infused with emotion via affirmations and autosuggestion. His reasoning is that our minds constantly attract vibrations that harmonize with our dominant thoughts. This is the true power behind synchronicity, serendipity, and the idea of there being no coincidences.

If affirmations are a key component of building up faith, how exactly does one go about creating effective affirmations? Some will even suggest that affirmations are useless, passé, and outdated. Continuing with this theme, my next post will focus on helpful tips for affirmations that work and the most beneficial ways to use them.

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Desire.   Somebody named a streetcar after it.  U2 created a song about it, and Napoleon Hill thought it was important enough that it topped his list of 13 “Keys to Success”.

Do you want to learn how to be rich, live abundantly, and achieve true happiness?  Too bad, because if so it probably isn’t going to happen to you. WANTING something to happen is mostly wishful thinking devoid of any power to achieve significant results.

DESIRE is self generating, self sustaining, and often referred to in such terms as burning, passionate, unbending, fervent, and all consuming. Desire succeeds where wanting fails because it refuses to rely on anything external or to accept excuses. It creates and attracts its own opportunities without regard to circumstance.

Some of the key ways in which WANTING and DESIRING are different:

Wanting will not survive minor inconveniences and other demands upon your time.

Desire will.

Wanting will not carry you past those difficult moments when the prospect of success seems remote.

Desire will.

Wanting will not embolden you to press on when everyone you know is telling you to give up.

Desire will.

Wanting will not attract the necessary circumstances and people into your life to help you achieve your goals.

Desire will.

Well then, if desire is the key it can do everything, right?  Nope.

There are a few select things wanting can do that desire won’t help you with:

Wanting can exist within the safety and security of your comfort zone.

Desire can’t.

Wanting is willing to accept excuses when things don’t turn out the way you would like.

Desire won’t.

Wanting gives into fears and peer pressure in order to fit in and avoid stretching your limits.

Desire doesn’t.

Napoleon Hill taught that to achieve big goals and dreams you must first learn to develop and maintain a burning desire for their achievement. Wanting is never enough. The object of your desire must be clear in your mind, and you must focus upon it with regularity.  Do that and you will have taken the first step from living a life of “want” to living a life infused with the power of DESIRE to make your dreams come true.

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Before The Secret became a huge commercial success, Napoleon Hill had it all figured out.

Around the year 1908 journalist Napoleon Hill was both challenged and given an opportunity by Andrew Carnegie to spend twenty years of his life interviewing the most successful, brilliant, and influential minds of the day without any offer of monetary compensation. He accepted the challenge, and among the people went on to study were notable businessmen and inventors Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, Teddy Roosevelt, John Wanamaner, Charles Schwab, Wilbur Wright, and Dr. Alexander Graham Bell.

Napoleon’s goal was to uncover the key common elements that underpinned extraordinary success and to share this knowledge with the rest of the world. The results of his efforts were published in 1937 in his bestselling book Think and Grow Rich.

Far from a dusty old relic, the topics he wrote about would many years later become a cornerstone of the new age, manifest your destiny movement. For example, the title of chapter one is “Thoughts are Things”, and the book’s opening notes mention the phrase “the secret” sixteen times, not including the occasions when he refers to the concept as “Carnegie’s secret”, or “this secret”.

Yet despite the sale of almost 20 million copies, most of the book’s concepts never became mainstream, so when a number of his ideas were re-introduced in the 21st century in conjunction with “The Secret’s” books and DVD’s, much of the content was thought revolutionary when in fact it was almost a century old!  Actually, the key ideas that Napoleon documented and “The Secret” re-introduced are timeless in nature and have benefited humanity for countless centuries. The first step in successful utilization of this knowledge begins with awareness.

In the video clip below he recounts how Andrew Carnegie shared with him the life changing idea that:

“everyone comes to the earth plane blessed with the privilege of controlling his mind power and directing it to whatever ends he may choose.”

He also touches on the concepts of gratitude, choice, and ultimate personal responsibility. Check it out:

Did you actually watch it? I know, I know, seven minutes is an eternity in internet time!  Over the next few postings I will go through some of Mr. Hill’s work in more detail because I find it fascinating and because I believe that his ideas are both powerful and relevant. Many people, myself included, can benefit by becoming better acquainted with the priceless knowledge that he captured.  Stay tuned!

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Let’s see, I just finished reading Eckhart Tolle’s first book, but now he’s got a new one that’s a big hit on Oprah…gotta make time for that one. Yesterday I finished listening to an audio series by Deepak, but there’s the one from Anthony Robbins that been gathering dust on my shelf, mocking me every time I walk by without popping it into the DVD player. Then there’s those books I ordered from Amazon last month on linguistics and psychotherapy, the articles I NEED to write for my own site and all of those really insightful RSS feeds I haven’t gotten to yet but that I know I REALLY NEED to read. After all, I pared down my subscription feeds to a mere eight so that I wouldn’t feel overwhelmed anymore. But gosh, I’m so far behind and I NEED TO catch up. Maybe I’ll block out a couple of hours a day until I am able to feel as though I’m all caught up. After all, all of this stuff is supposed to make me smarter, happier, and just an overall better person. But man, there’s so much to do…

S T O P !!!

Personal development is supposed to be fun. After all, if it sucked so bad there wouldn’t be so many of us pursuing it. Face it, you have to get the grass cut and do laundry and at least slow down for red lights, but are your neighbors going to complain to the homeowners board if you’re not up on the latest in present moment awareness or if you haven’t reframed all of your limiting beliefs? The fact is that so many of us are engaged in the ongoing process of personal development because of the incredible rewards it offers. But that doesn’t mean it can’t also be fun.

Personal development is the journey of continuing to learn and grow as a person alongside whatever else happens to occupy your day. Unless of course you’ve made it your full time endeavor to assist others with their own personal growth. Then it pretty much is what you do. If so, you certainly don’t want a client or a subscriber knowing more than you about the latest and hottest success guru, do you? Or worse yet, have some smarty pants commenter on your blog point out something insightful that you yourself weren’t capable of thinking of. God forbid!!!

Personal Development is supposed to be fun!

Even when you are doing it for a living. Especially when you are doing it for a living. Who cares if somebody knows more than you about the latest emotional healing technique, soul reading method, dowsing procedure, or the hottest author from Oprah? What a blessing if this is so! It means that somebody else has already put in the effort to acquire the knowledge and all you have to do is learn from them as they share the best of what they’ve come to know. Often this beats the heck out of starting from nowhere by yourself and trying to achieve the same level of understanding. That’s less work for you and more time to play Halo3.

Personal development is not a race, and we are not judged objectively by our friends, relatives, coworkers, fellow bloggers, or anyone else I can think of. Subjectively, people can and will judge the hell out of you, but why should you care?  Setting your internal compass to the widely scattered courses charted by the opinions of others is guaranteed to get you nowhere in particular and feeling a whole lot less than authentic as you try to keep making corrections to the course of public perception.

Truth is, there is no objective outside source of how you are growing personally because personal growth happens from the inside out. YOU are in charge of discovering your own unique purpose, deciding weather you are going to live to it or not, and interpreting what every experience you have means to YOU along the way.

You can even choose to not have a purpose, not to grow, and not to listen to or read any anything from any of the gurus I mentioned previously. There’s no boss cracking a whip over your shoulder if you should fail to “get it”. The life you live is its own reward or punishment. You can just go out and have fun for the sake of having fun, and when you get tired enough of repeating certain experiences over and over you will eventually become self motivated enough to become interested in personal growth. It’s the ultimate in freedom of choice.

Here are Some Tips on Making Personal Development Fun Again:

1.  Don’t take yourself too seriously.

Seriously, just don’t.  There rest of us are too busy taking ourselves seriously and we demand that you focus on us instead of worrying about what we think about you. We’re not thinking about you…we’re too busy thinking about ourselves.

2.   Personal growth doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Real growth only happens when you interact with other people.

All the books and tapes don’t mean anything if you act like a sh*t towards the cashier, the waiter, or that customer service rep on the phone who isn’t personally responsible for the problem you’ve been experiencing. Measure your growth in the responses you generate from others and make it a point to have a good time while doing so. The smiles you get back will be plenty of reward, and you’ll find yourself smiling inside as well.

3.  Realize that trying to be the most knowledgeable person on all things self improvement is an impossibility and attempting to do so would be a huge pain in the ass.

There’s a huge ego investment in feeling like you have to know more than anybody else so that you don’t ever look foolish or be caught sounding ignorant. If you’re ever guilty simply refer back to #1 above.

And in Conclusion:

Live with authenticity. Be happy being yourself and work to change the things you don’t like along the way. It’s pretty much a never ending process so there’s no need to try and rush out and get it all done at once. Enjoy the process, and above all, be aware of how you show up and the way you treat others. Hey - didn’t some long haired guy with a beard and sandals say the same thing a couple thousand years ago?

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