Chapter 2 How to Use Power Affirmations

What is the most effective way to use Power Affirmations? Here are a few suggestions.

1. Pick one or two affirmations and begin using them

immediately. Don't wait until you create the "perfect" affirmations for your specific situation before you start using them. The future is now. Procrastination is the killer of success. Immediate action creates momentum. Repetition of positive thought sustains it. Do not base your choice by whether or not you already believe the affirmation or if the belief seems possible to you at this time. Repeating the power affirmations with emotional intensity and a feeling of certainty will eventually install the beliefs in your subconscious mind. At the very least, pick a generic affirmation like "Every day in every way I'm getting better and better." Then you can always choose or create other power affirmations later after you set specific goals. Resolve right now to start using affirmations within the next 60 minutes.

2. Write the power affirmation at least 10-20 times per day. For best results, write it down 10-20 times as soon as you arise and 10-20 times before you go to bed. This allows you to set the direction of your thoughts before the day starts and plant the seed in your subconscious mind before you go to sleep. If you do this consistently, you will naturally find this thought re-occurring in your mind several times per day. You will begin to notice the power affirmations shaping your other thoughts through the course of the day. As the power affirmations create more and more similar thoughts, you will create a direction and build momentum towards the desired results.

3. After you write the affirmation 10-20 times, repeat it aloud in front of a mirror 5-10 times. Repeating the affirmations aloud further installs the beliefs into your subconscious mind. It is very important to repeatedly both write and audibly state your affirmations for maximum effectiveness.

4. As you write and audibly repeat them, feel the emotional power of the affirmations in your body. See yourself as having already created this result in your life. Feel the way you would feel if you already had this result in your life. Hear the things you will hear when this affirmation becomes an everyday reality. Breathe the way you would breathe if this affirmation were already true. Move your body as if this were already a conditioned belief.

5. Now let your positive thoughts of power and certainty guide your actions. Live consciously. Take complete control of your own mind rather than passively allowing the influencers in the media control it for you.

6. Combine using the affirmations with a goal setting and daily progress measurement program. By measuring your progress daily, it is much easier to see where you are succeeding (and celebrate!) and see where you need to improve. Daily? Well, everyone is different, but that's what I've found necessary for myself. Taking measurement even weekly proved to be too long for me. For one thing, I am so active, I found it too difficult and time consuming to try to remember and write down all the progress I made. Second, I need feedback sooner in order take faster corrective action and to seize opportunities that come up every day.

The best program I've found for myself is a simple one that I created for myself. You can read all about it in Chapter 12 of this book. Like all the other information in this site, it's free. And the tools you need to implement it are simple and easily (and inexpensively available)--like a note-book or regular planner and a pen. I could have probably created a book, whole seminar, and audio program and special planning materials for sale, but it's really so unnecessary. And contrary to the overall philosophy I'm committed to accomplishing with this website.

Does this type of conditioning take time and effort? Absolutely...on a daily basis. There is no something for nothing. This is where most people fail. They don't follow through with these steps every day for a long period of time. They get inspired for a few days after hearing a motivational speaker or after reading a book. Then, after the motivational "high" wears off, they fall back into their old habits. Or they get so busy that this is an easy item to ignore. I know that this is true, because this is what used to happen to me. Successful people take the actions that unsuccessful people will not.

Event training through short seminars, etc. is necessary and great. But Process Training, training that guides your every day habits, is the real key to sustained results. Process Training is achieved through sustained exposure to the learning material over a prolonged period of time. And it requires constant review and correction until the skill is installed as a subconscious habit (like how you learn to drive a car). Most people who think they can get all the information they need by attending a couple of seminars or listening to a best selling program one time will usually be disappointed. The information just goes by too fast to allow it to really soak in.

Why do you think we see the same commercials over and over again? Or hear the same slogan? It's because advertisers know if they can get our attention for 30 seconds (or less), to watch the same commercial multiple times over a period of days, weeks, months, years, they know they can sell us billions of dollars of merchandise. Isn't it time that you used the exact same technique to condition your mind on purpose? Take control of your mind.

So, listening to motivational speakers on audio tape on a regular basis (in other words, daily) is one effective way to add process training to your life; however, many of the thoughts they communicate race by without having a chance to take root in either your conscious or subconscious mind. And there's often a lot of fluff just to get to the main points that will really change your life. It's much more difficult to take advantage of the power of repetition which is crucial to create long term results.

I know all this too well from personal experience. That's why I decided to do something to meet this challenge for myself. Here is the final step that tied everything together for me:

7. To accelerate your conditioning, listen to Power Affirmations on CDs or MP3 audio files. Either format is far superior than audio tapes. Listening to the Power Affirmations on CDs or using an MP3 player like iPod allows you to effortlessly condition your subconscious mind to several beliefs in a very short period of time. It's like listening to a radio commercial over and over again. You are "selling" yourself to automatically accept a specific set of beliefs for a specific set of results. One technique that I have found helpful is to play the CDs continuously at night at a low volume as I sleep. This further conditions my subconscious mind to these power thoughts. This is truly "power training" for your
subconscious mind.

Why CDs or MP3s?

While audio tapes are useful, I have found that recordings on CDs or MP3s are at least 100 times more effective because of the power of repetition. Repetition of thought is one of the most effective ways to install a thought or idea into your subconscious thinking.

Once I realized the superior power of CDs and MP3s for learning, I invested hundreds of dollars to install two 10 CD changers in my car--at a time when it was difficult to pay my bills each month. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. Since I made this simple change in how I listen to self-help audio programs, my momentum has exploded.

This was back before MP3 players became popular. Now I've made the transition to my iPod MP3 player which is even better. Now I can carry around my entire library of recorded affirmations and positive thinking books on my iPod and listen to them anytime I want to. I believe listening to programs on CDs or MP3s can do the same for you.

Here are some of the many benefits to listening to power affirmations on CDs and MP3:

1. You can listen to the same power thoughts repeatedly until they are fully conditioned in your mind. Because the affirmations are on separate tracks, you can use the auto-repeat function of your CD player to listen to the same affirmation for as long as you want. You can't do this with audio tapes without a lot of stopping and starting which breaks your mental state. This simple, subtle change makes a huge difference in effectiveness.

Just as an example, in my recordings, an affirmation is repeated about 4-8 times per minute (depending on the length of the affirmation). This means that in my morning half-hour to one hour drive to work, I can listen to about 120-480 repetitions of the same or various affirmations. By the time I arrive at work, I'm wired and ready to go. Even more so than when only listening to other self-help programs. I mix them up for balance. I found that only repeating them verbally could not compete with listening to them on CD because of the massive difference in quantity.

2. You can listen to multiple affirmations related to a single subject. Writing and verbally repeating your affirmations in front of a mirror, while critical and effective, takes a lot of time--probably at least 1-2 hours a day to do it right. It is very difficult to do more than a couple of affirmations effectively. And because of the amount of time it can take to properly use even a single affirmation, most people quit the affirmation habit before they begin to get real results. And then they mistakenly believe "affirmations don't work for me." And of course, they are right--if this is how they are going to use affirmations.

Listening to power affirmations on CD allows you to listen and incorporate 30-40 affirmations in the amount of time that it would normally take to do 2 or 3. And because you can listen to them in the background while you do other things (driving, cleaning the house, even sleeping), you actually spend more time directing your mind to these thoughts. So not only are they more effective in the first place, the CDs actually accelerate your progress faster than you probably currently believe is possible.

The truth is that creating outstanding results often requires extensive reconditioning of your thinking. The amount of reconditioning that is necessary, usually requires changing many habits and beliefs simultaneously. Most people find it difficult to change even a single core belief consistently, much less changing several. At least that was my experience. Unless you find a way to change multiple beliefs simultaneously, you are likely to continue being frustrated in your efforts to achieve your goals. This type of audio program, used consistently, makes such changes much easier.

3. You can use the shuffle or random function on your CD or MP3 player to change the order that you listen to the affirmations. Sometimes it's helpful to listen to them in order, other times you may feel you need more variety.

4. Because listening to the recordings can be either a passive or active activity, it is much easier to stay consistent. Let's face it. The odds are you will not always feel motivated to do your affirmations every day. Or your schedule may be so jammed that it is impossible to stay with your daily program. Those are the times you need the affirmations most. It's just like daily planning--if you don't have time to plan every day, you must plan every day.

Ah...but listening to recorded affirmations...almost anyone can create enough motivation to do that on a daily basis. And it is easy to listen to the CDs while you are getting ready for work in the morning, or driving, or doing some other activity.

My favorite time and place to listen to my Power Affirmations is in my car on the way to work. Now that I have switched to using an iPod, I simply plug it into the holder I have in my car and it's ready to go. I can either listen to them passively or repeat them as I drive. This has made all the difference to me in conditioning these beliefs and actions into my life on a daily basis.

5. Unlike audio tapes, the CDs or MP3s will never wear out with repeated use and will never jam. As long as you don't scratch them or delete them, they will last at least a lifetime--probably longer.

6. Listening to the recorded affirmations makes it easier to expose yourself to these thoughts for a longer period of time. Anyone who tells you that you only need to spend 5 minutes a day conditioning your mind for success (either through affirmations or other tools) simply doesn't know what he or she is talking about. Coming up with a powerful affirmation is relatively easy, so that usually isn't the deciding factor in success or failure in your use of affirmations. The real deciding factors are quantity and emotional energy. Usually if you get enough quantity, the emotional energy takes care of itself.

I looked in multiple places to find a set of recordings that met my personal requirements. I couldn't find any. So, I finally decided to make my own. While I originally created them for my own use, it didn't take me long to realize that these recordings are so outstanding that I have a responsibility to make them available to other positive, like minded people.

The points you will hear in these audio files are as many or more than most programs 10 times the size in terms of thought quality. That's because theses Power Affirmations cut straight to the point. No stories, jokes, or personal commentary. That type of content has its place in lecture type programs in order to emphasize important points, but not here. These affirmations are highly concentrated. And you will remember them, because they are in the first person, present tense, short, and on separate tracks to allow for repetition.

With repeated listening, you will automatically find yourself using this information time and again--especially when you are faced with a major challenge. You will be prepared for the moments of decision that inevitably come to all of us.

Without conditioned habits, many of us fumble the moments of opportunity when they inevitably present themselves. These moments of power come and go so quickly that you only notice them if you are paying attention. Many times you have only seconds to respond to a situation. Blink and the opportunity is gone. So you have to always be “at the ready.”

Many of the audio programs offered by others are essential and necessary. I listen and re-listen to them all the time. But when I really want to accelerate my results, I spend more time going through these Power Affirmation recordings and my effectiveness and productivity take off like a rocket.

Success Rule #1: Take Immediate Action

One of the most important rules of success (defined in this case as achieving a specific result you want by design) is to never leave the site of setting a goal without taking at least one immediate, definite, positive action towards the achievement of your goal. If you don't take an immediate results-focused action, there is an excellent possibility that you will lose motivation and momentum and significantly increase the amount of time it will take to achieve a result). Seize the moment of motivation while it exists.

One immediate action you can take is to find one of the Power Affirmations in this book and spend the next 10 minutes using it with enthusiasm and writing it down several times.

After you do that, you can move on to…