Many of my clients ask for some support with life’s challenges, so I thought I would share some thoughts on a straight-forward technique to help overcome some of life’s obstacles or help position your thinking to achieve some positive life or work outcomes.
Often referred to as mantras or affirmations, they support your thinking to help reprogram your mind to help you achieve something you are working towards.
Note the last word of that paragraph: when I am working with clients I focus a lot on language and phrasing, as getting it right is very important (I’ve written another article on the use of language).
Mantras and affirmations
Mantras originate in Hinduism and Buddhism. They have a specific purpose and are mainly used to aid concentration in meditation, normally by using a repeated word or very short phrase or sound.
Affirmations, although generally accepted to mean support or agreement or belief, mean something quite different in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) terms and it’s this meaning to which I subscribe and refer.
Positive thinking
So what are NLP affirmations? They are positive statements that can help you to challenge and overcome self-sabotaging or negative thoughts. The technique is to repeat them often and, crucially, you have to believe in yourself when you say them.
These often simple and short statements can start to make positive changes by correcting the mind’s self-talk that can sometimes trip us up in life.
You might consider affirmations to be wishful thinking or just day-dreaming, but consider this: research shows that regular and sustained physical exercise can make you physically fit and build stamina. The same is true of training the brain, where research in neuro-science shows the positive impact of NLP affirmations.
Positive affirmations are regular repetitive exercises to improve our mental health and general outlook. These positive mental repetitions will, if crafted properly, reprogram our thinking patterns and self-talk so that, over time, we begin to think and – more importantly – behave differently.
When we start to behave differently it reinforces the change we want to adopt in the mind, which then improves the way we think, and the circle of think and behave develops. I use this technique with considerable success as part of my coaching programmes.
A couple of examples of typical self-doubt and negative thought are:
- “I’m never going to succeed in this company; I’m just not as smart as some of the others.”
- “I wish I could sell my ideas in work, it’s always the same in meetings; I let the others walk over me and my ideas.”
Regularly having thoughts like these can really get you down, demotivate you and can become self-fulfilling prophecies; so it is important to stop them in their tracks.
NLP affirmations
NLP affirmations have been used to successfully treat people with low self-esteem, depression and other mental health conditions too, as they have been shown to stimulate the areas in our brains that make us more likely to affect positive changes in regard to our health.
Taking control of your self-talk like this has a great influence on your emotions and, by improving or correcting these inner dialogues, you gain control of your feelings, your thoughts and behaviours. This ultimately will also reshape your personality to what you want it to be.
So how can we tackle this?
Your affirmations must be positive and in the present tense. When you make an affirmation for yourself, you need to believe and have faith in yourself so must be authentic about its creation and use. In using the statement repeatedly to yourself, you are impacting on your subconscious mind which eventually will accept this as a command and will comply.
A well quoted example which proved very effective, taught by the Swiss doctor Emil Coue in 1910 to his patients, was “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better”.
Crafting affirmations is a custom process, although by doing some detailed research you may well find some generic ones in books or on the web. However, working with a good coach will help you get to the essence of the issues which are troubling you or holding you back from what you desire in life.
Once these are unlocked, they can be reverse-engineered to help develop positive self-talk and thoughts so as to help you move towards something you want to achieve.
To help your thinking, here are some suggestions for positive affirmations you might like to adopt or to amend to fit your own situation:
- Learn from yesterday and focus on today.
- Every day is another chance to excel and be happy.
- Keep going: onwards and upwards.
- I possess all the skills and attributes I need; I must demonstrate them better today.
- I must focus on things I can control or change.
- I control my mind and therefore my life.
- Whatever challenges come my way today, I will overcome them.
- I am free of pain today.
- I am able to say “No” to others when I need to.
- Today I will speak with clarity and confidence.