Affirmations For Meditation And Reflection (Week Two)
1. LEVERAGE THE LAW OF ATTRACTION
What you radiate outward in your thoughts, feelings, mental pictures, and words, you attract into your life.—CATHERINE PONDER Author of The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity
Have you ever tried to turn gravity on or off? Probably not because you realize that it can’t be done. Well, there’s another powerful force in the Universe that—just like gravity—surrounds us and affects us. It’s called The Law of Attraction, and maybe we can’t turn it on or off, but we can harness its tremendous benefits.
To be successful, you must learn how to use The Law of Attraction to create the life you really want. If you’re already working on implementing the principles in your life, think of this as a fresh opportunity to brush up on your skills and check your progress. It takes time and consistent effort to train ourselves to behave, think, and speak in only positive ways, but the Universe rewards us exponentially with abundance, joy, and unlimited benefits. Basically, we reap what we sow, and we can freely choose to sow seeds of positivity!
- I am aware that positive actions and emotions attract positive outcomes; I am choosing to radiate positive energy into the Universe and reaping the bounty it reflects back to me.
Basic chemistry tells us that a physical object, such as a house or a dog or your phone, is made up of billions of individual atoms—tiny parcels of energy—that bond together into different forms such as water, metal, and plastic. Similarly, our thoughts are also a form of energy—easily detected as brain waves by standard medical equipment—that can interact with our physical world just like any other form of energy does. When we understand this basic science, we realize that our thoughts can actually interact with the physical world and help bring about what we want to happen.
The core tenet of The Law of Attraction says: What you think about, talk about, believe strongly about, and feel intensely about, you will bring about. Once you know that, by using your thoughts, you can help bring about the opportunities, resources, and people who can help you accomplish your goals, you’ll start paying greater attention to the direction of your thoughts and what you focus on throughout the day.
- I am constantly aware of the power of positive thinking and I am supported by the Universe as it brings me endless opportunities for growth.
Everything—including you—is vibrating at a specific and unique frequency. That means you can learn to use the power of deliberate thought to stay in a state of higher vibration and attract what you want in life. Here’s how:
Step One: Ask for what you want.
Decide what you really want and use words that focus on that goal. Replace negative images and thoughts with positive ones. Consistently ask for what you want and then let the Universe worry about how you’ll get it.
Step Two: Believe you’ll get what you want, then take action.
Believing means being confident that you’ve put your future in the hands of a greater power and that your goals can be accomplished. Taking action is another form of belief—after all, we would only take action on goals we believe are possible to begin with.
Step Three: Receive what you want.
One of the best ways to bring yourself into vibrational alignment with what you want is to use affirmations—statements of your goals and desires already achieved in present time. Repeat them regularly so that your subconscious mind maintains a vibrational match to what you want.
- I am asking for what I want several times a day, believing that I will receive it.
2. SET GOALS THAT INSPIRE YOU
If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.—ANDREW CARNEGIE American steel industrialist and one of the richest people in history.
Success is not only an attitude and belief system, it’s also a science. Experts on the science of success know that the brain is a goal-seeking organism, and when you give it a specific goal, it will work overtime to achieve it.
Dr. Gail Matthews of Dominican University conducted a study proving that people who write down their goals, then create action steps to achieve them—and make regular progress reports to a friend—have nearly double the success rate at achieving what they want! Think about it: by taking a few extra steps, you can be twice as successful as those people who merely think about their goals.
It may surprise you to also learn that the small percentage of people who write down their goals
and regularly review them earn nine times more over the course of their lifetimes than those who
don’t. This alone should motivate you to write down your goals!
- I am clear about what my goals are and I know that I will accomplish them.
If you have no criteria for measuring the successful completion of a goal, you don’t have a true goal—you simply have a good idea. An actual goal that inspires action and unleashes the power of your subconscious mind must include how much (a measurable quantity) and by when (a specific time and date for completion).
One of the best ways to get clarity on your goals is to write them out in detail. When you write it all down, your subconscious will know specifically what to work on, including which opportunities to focus on to bring about success. Reread your goals three times a day—close your eyes and picture each one as if it were already accomplished and imagine how it feels to actually be living with that achievement.
Most of our goals represent incremental improvements in our life—get new car insurance, organise my house, finish the project presentation. But, what if you could work toward accomplishing a breakthrough goal—something that substantially improves life as you know it, such as buying your first home or starting a business or funding your retirement? Those are the kind of goals that are worth pursuing with passion. Write down a few breakthrough goals for your vision—including a completion date. Then focus on those quantum leaps that will change your life.
I am visualizing my breakthrough goal as if it’s already been accomplished, and I’m feeling the joyful emotions of living the life of my dreams.
Once a goal is set, three things will emerge that stop most people—but they’re not going to stop you! They are considerations, fears, and roadblocks.
Let’s say you decide to double your income by the end of the year. Before you know it, thoughts will emerge like I won’t have time for my family or I’ll have to work twice as many hours. These thoughts are considerations. They’ve been in your subconscious a long time, but now that they have come to light, you can address them and move on.
Fears, on the other hand, are feelings: You may have a fear of rejection, a fear of being laughed at, or a fear of failure. But fears are also just part of the process of moving toward your goals. Knowing that in advance helps you overcome them.
Roadblocks are purely external circumstances that can be overcome such as not having the money to start a new business or needing additional training before seeking a promotion. Roadblocks are obstacles that appear in your path, but they also are just things you will have to deal with.
Once you know to expect considerations, fears, and roadblocks, you’ll realize they’re not as overwhelming as you thought. Learn to accept and confront them because, more often than not, they are the very things that have been holding you back in life.
- I am amazed how far I can go when I set goals and go after them with conviction and confidence.
3. TAKE A GOAL AND CHUNK IT DOWN
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.—SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS Better known as the American writer, humourist, and entrepreneur Mark Twain
When you break down large goals into small tasks and accomplish them one at a time, you’ll move forward much more easily. It’s known as “chunking it down.” That’s how big goals are achieved.
One great way to discover the individual steps is to ask people who have already accomplished what you want to do. From personal experience, they can guide you through the necessary steps and give you advice on how to avoid common pitfalls. You can also purchase books or guides, take online courses, or even start from your end goal and look backward. Imagine that you have already achieved your goal, what did you do to get where you are now? What was the last thing you did? And the thing before that? When you find the first thing you did, that’s your starting point.
- I am comfortable asking for guidance and advice from people who have already done what I want to do.
Mind mapping is a simple yet powerful process for creating a to-do list for achieving your goal. It lets you determine things like who you need to talk to, what information you need to pull together, what the deadlines are that you need to meet, and more. If you’ve always dreamed of becoming an author and want to write your first book—a breakthrough goal that would lead to an extraordinary new career—you could use mind mapping to help you “chunk down” your very large goal into smaller steps.
Here’s how mind mapping works:
1) Draw a circle in the centre of a page. Inside the circle, note down the name of your major goal (write a book).
2) Divide your goal into the major subcategories of tasks you’ll need to do to accomplish the primary goal and draw a mini-circle for each (interview experts, find an agent).
3) Draw several lines radiating outward from each mini-circle and label each line with its corresponding small task (make a phone call asking for an interview, hire a transcriber on).
4) Break down each one of the small tasks with action items to create a master to-do list.
- I am using mind-mapping skills to break down large goals into smaller, manageable tasks and I’m accomplishing them one at a time.
We recommend that you plan your day the night before—make a fresh to-do list based on the current day’s accomplishments and outcomes. Spend a few minutes visualizing exactly how you want the day to go, and your subconscious mind will work during the night thinking of creative ways to reach the goals you set out to achieve.
Each morning, your plan should be to complete the most important items on your to-do list first. Here’s a tip for making this a success: As soon as you take out your list, identify five things you absolutely must accomplish that day, then number them one through five, with one being the item you least enjoy and five being the item you most enjoy. By putting the item you least enjoy at the top of your list, it becomes your first task of the day. Now, not only won’t you spend the whole day thinking about it, but getting it done first creates momentum and builds confidence, setting the tone for the rest of the day.
- I am planning my day the night before, which allows my subconscious mind to work throughout the night on accomplishing my goals.
4. SUCCESS LEAVES CLUES
Long ago, I realized that success leaves clues, and that people who produce outstanding results do specific things to create those results. I believed that if I precisely duplicated the actions of others, I could reproduce the same quality of results that they had.—ANTHONY ROBBINS Author of Unlimited Power
Clues are easy to find if you’re willing to look. Almost anything you can think of has already been done by someone else—whether it’s losing weight, raising a family, or starting a business—and that’s great news because it means they have left clues about how they achieved their success. You can identify these clues and mimic their actions on your own path to reach these same major goals.
For example, if you’ve just been promoted at the office and want to eventually reach the senior executive level, there are hundreds of books for you to read on the topics of leadership, personal success, goal setting, human psychology, and more. What’s more, just a phone call away are people
who are available as teachers, mentors, advisors, and consultants.
- I am seeking out and finding clues left by others that help me achieve my goals.
There are many people within reach who would love to talk about what they do and how they came to be doing it. Whatever your dream is, there is someone who has achieved a similar dream and has clues to share—but you have to make the move and ask. You can even offer to volunteer or intern with one of them so that you can get a hands-on learning experience—talk about finding clues!
I am seeking out and working with mentors who can teach me what I need to know to be successful.
At some time or another, you’ve probably thought about asking an expert for advice yourself, but shrugged it off with thoughts such as Why would someone take the time out of their day to talk with me? Why would they want to potentially create their own competition? Stop! You’re creating roadblocks in your own mind that don’t even exist. Most people love to talk about how they built their business or accomplished their goals.
Here are a few reasons why we don’t take advantage of this resource that’s so readily available:
- We’re too reluctant to do something no one else we know is doing.
- We’d have to go out of our way or take time from something else—like friends or hobbies.
- Our fear of rejection overrides our desire to ask for advice or information.
- We’d have to do something different, and even when it’s in our own best interest, change is uncomfortable.
- We’d have to work at it, and frankly, most people just don’t want to work that hard.
- I am alert when people speak on topics directly or indirectly related to my goals because they contain valuable clues that I want to learn.
5. USE AFFIRMATIONS TO RELEASE THE BRAKES
Everything you want is just outside your comfort zone.—ROBERT ALLEN Bestselling author of Multiple Streams of Income
Have you ever driven your car and realized that the emergency brake was on? What did you do to overcome the resistance of the brake? Did you step harder on the accelerator pedal? No, you probably released the brake and the car accelerated on its own without any extra effort.
We do the same thing in our lives. We hold on to negative images, toxic experiences, and difficult relationships from our past that we haven’t processed yet. Sometimes our beliefs about reality are simply incorrect and we harbour guilt and self-doubt because we either don’t want or don’t know how to let go. No matter how hard we try, the drag from these experiences and emotions cancels out our forward progress when we try to achieve our goals. But we will never be able to get exactly what we want in life unless we release these brakes—and that means letting go of our limiting beliefs, thoughts, and negative emotions like guilt, fear, anger, and resentment.
- I am “releasing the brakes” by letting go of limiting beliefs and focusing on the certainty of my success.
Your comfort zone is basically a self-created prison that you live in, made from a collection of cant’s, must’s, must nots, and other baseless beliefs created by all the negative thoughts you have allowed to reside in your subconscious mind during your lifetime.
We create an endless loop of responses that reinforce negative or erroneous behaviours, which keep us trapped in our self-made “comfort zone.” Constant complaining (as we discussed earlier) focuses our mind on our present circumstances and gets us caught once again in the endless circle of negative self-talk—those can’ts, mustn’ts, and so on.
But we can change the cycle. We can focus instead on flooding our minds with positive thoughts, words and images especially through the use of affirmations. These affirmations—and the positive self-talk that they bombard our brain with—actually create new pathways in our subconscious
mind and steer us off the hamster wheel—that ingrained cycle of insanity that we’ve created for ourselves. We are never truly stuck. We can change—and committing to a steady diet of affirmations will get us there!
I am expanding my comfort zone every day by using affirmations that fill my
subconscious mind with positive thoughts and images.
Now, it’s up to you to write and begin using affirmations that are specific to your circumstances and life goals. Use the guidelines below to make your personal affirmations powerfully effective:
1) Start with the words “I am.” Your subconscious mind interprets these two powerful words as a command—they are the most effective words in our language.
2) Use the present tense. Describe what you want as though it has already been accomplished.
3) State it in the positive. Don’t think about what you don’t want—affirm what you do want.
4) Keep it brief. Make it short enough to be easily remembered.
5) Make it specific. Vague affirmations produce vague results.
6) Include an action word ending with -ing. This adds power.
7) Include at least one dynamic emotion or feeling. What would you be feeling if you had already achieved the goal?
8) Make affirmations for yourself, not others. Don’t include someone else’s actions. What will you be doing?
9) Add “or something better.” Our experience often limits what we ask for. Always ask for more.
- I am constantly thinking, talking, and writing about the reality I want to create.