Why Affirmations are BS…
🙋♀️ Raise your hand if you have ever tried to use positive affirmations?
🙋♀️ Raise your hand if you felt like you were lying to yourself when you were using them?
🙋♀️ Raise your hand if you gave up on using them five minutes later because it felt like a joke?
If you’re not familiar with positive affirmations, they are a phrase or statement that you repeat to yourself, typically trying to off-set negative self-talk.
The problem with using positive affirmations is that they ignore one gigantic thing…the subconscious mind.
Many people are familiar with the concept that we have a conscious and subconscious mind. Our conscious mind includes the things that we are actively aware of, such as, our thoughts and feelings. Our subconscious mind lies below the level of our awareness influencing our actions and behaviors.
While most people understand the differences between the conscious and subconscious minds, many of them do not realize how powerful the subconscious really is. Our conscious mind makes up about 5% of our brain functioning, while the subconscious mind makes up about 95%…ninety five percent. That means that 95% of what drives your life is below the level of your awareness!
If I try to use my conscious (5%) mind to change my subconscious (95%) mind, how do you imagine that’s going to go? Not very well, for my conscious mind anyway. Our subconscious mind has been evolving since humans existed and will always win out over our conscious minds UNLESS we figure out how to work with it and not against it.
Think of it like this, right now you are reading this post on a computer or a phone. What you are seeing is the conscious mind. The subconscious mind makes up all the underlying programming that creates the images/words on the screen. The conscious is what you see while the subconscious is what creates it. If I want to create new beliefs or new thoughts I can only do this by entering the programming and writing a code for a new belief.
Our subconscious is very rigid. It does not like change, it’s not designed to. It’s job is to keep us alive and it does that by repeating the same experiences as yesterday and it repeats those same experiences by maintaining the same beliefs.
Our subconscious interprets anything unknown as scary and that the unknown could possibly lead us to death. So if I’ve held the belief that “I’m not good enough” AND I am still alive, do you really think my subconscious is going to magically start letting me believe “I am good enough” just because I use it as a positive affirmation? No! Because that new belief represents the unknown and the unknown is a threat to my very existence.
So how do we work with our subconscious mind?
We make changes in beliefs incrementally. We introduce new possibilities. We make suggestions to our subconscious mind, not demands of it.
I like to think of making suggestions to my subconscious like I am planting seeds. If I plant them and water them, eventually they will grow. My favorite ways to start these suggestions are with a “maybe” or a “what if” statement.
I find these work well for the subconscious because they are not absolutes. It gives my subconscious something to consider without outright challenging it’s existing belief.
Let’s look at an example…
A common belief for many of us is “I’m not good enough,” but when I try to change that to “I am good enough,” my subconscious will immediately reject it, why? Because it is firmly holding the opposite belief and it is unwilling to be challenged.
So I plant a seed…”maybe I am good enough” or “what if I am good enough already?”
Because I am not phrasing it in absolute terms “I am good enough”, my subconscious cannot immediately reject it. And because it does not immediately reject it, my subconscious can now start to ponder that seed, “hmmm, what if by some chance I actually am good enough?” 🤔
So how will you know if your subconscious is accepting or rejecting your new belief? Tap into your body, it will tell you. When you’re trying out a new belief, notice how you feel physically, this is an indicator of whether your subconscious is accepting or rejecting what you are telling yourself.
Acceptance typically feels like expansion, I can breathe easily, I feel an openness, a lightness, or to say it simply, I feel good.
Rejection typically feels like contraction, breathing is harder, I feel a tightness, a heaviness, or to say it simply, I feel bad.
We may not notice extreme changes physically by using the planting seeds method, but as long as we are not feeling rejection sensations we are typically on track to creating a new belief.
So maybe affirmations are not entirely BS; however, we do have to learn to use them in a way that is acceptable to our subconscious mind, otherwise we are as the saying goes…up the creek without a paddle.
If you need more help with changing your unhelpful beliefs, check out my free guide for more examples and journal space to write out your new beliefs!
