Category: how to

Affirmations Are Like Free Throws

Good morning, fellow affirmers!

Wherever you live in our world in 2022. you probably are familiar with the game of basketball. In North America, it’s been one of the four major sports for well over 100 years. The rest of the world has come around to it in recent decades.

If you’re familiar with the game, you’re familiar with free throws. During regular play, players guard each other, but free throws are shot when a player is fouled. If you’re a soccer/football fan, it’s like a penalty and a free kick.

How is an affirmation like a free throw? Three ways.

  1. They both are a break from “regular play.”
  2. They both require focus.
  3. They both require a lot of practice and repetition.

During a typical day, you’re exposed to a myriad of thoughts and ideas that aren’t your own and may not support your goals and aspirations. The news has opinions. Your boss has opinions. Your friends have opinions. Your family has opinions. Every one is constantly pouring disjointed and distracting information to your vacuum of consciousness and your mind readily absorbs it.

Affirmations are a break from that constant deluge. They are a way to put information, ideas, and thoughts into your mind that support you – your well-being and your aspirations.

They both require focus. Many great basketball are mediocre free throw shooters. They can fall-away 20-footers with a hand in their face, but they can’t make an unguarded shot because they lack focus.

Your mind has been unconsciously absorbing thoughts that don’t serve you day in and Fay out for decades. Consciously focusing, especially at first, makes a huge difference with new affirmations. Whether read, listen, or say them, give them the focus that will help you succeed.

The last comparison, and maybe the most important, is practice and repetition. Even with great focus, great free throw shooters practice incessantly. Through repetition, they develop the muscle memory to make free throws practically automatically.

People often wonder why they are asked to use affirmations over and over. It’s because they are different from hearing a fact. A fact is something you hear once and you know it.

Affirmations have a different goal. You’re not repeating until you know it. You’re repeating until they replace old negative thought patterns that have enjoyed years of unconscious repetition in your mind.

You must practice and repeat affirmations over and over until that mental muscle memory forms that makes them your dominant thoughts no matter what els3 you’re exposed to during the day.

I’ve been using affirmations for 30 years. When you thin’ of them like free throws, they become an effective tool in you achieving the life you seek.

Wherever you are on your journey today, remember this. You’re a one-in-a-trillion miracle.

Put your mind on your side!

Ray

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About Affirmations: You Already Think in Affirmations All Day Long

Today’s Thought:

Positive thinking may not work 100% of the time, but negative thinking does.

When I talk to people about using positive affirmations I often encounter comments like, “Well, affirmations are OK, but they just won’t work for me,” or “I could never do that.”

I always think, “Did I just hear you right?” You just used a (negative) affirmation and proved your own point incorrect by demonstrating how successful that affirmation is for you. You believe you can’t do affirmations or that they would never work for you and your affirmation has come true!

Consider this. You think in affirmations all day long. You are constantly molding your experience of the world through a series of can/can’t am/aren’t statements in your mind (a.k.a. positive affirmations or negative affirmations). An affirmation, after all, is only a statement that you can/can’t accomplish something or that you are/aren’t capable.

I love reading articles by folks who say affirmations are a fraud, useless, or self-delusional (more affirmations). The kinds of affirmations you think have a pretty high correlation to the outcomes in your life. When you think in positive affirmations about something, your attitude and your actions fall into line and you generally succeed. When you harbor and express negative affirmations about something failure is almost sure to follow.

Positive affirmations are not magic pills. They don’t change certain laws of physics. They cannot always impact the quantitative, but they can almost always improve the qualitative. For instance, a sixty year-old woman cannot affirm that she is twenty and wake up one morning 20 years old. However, the sixty year-old who affirms that she feels twenty is going to remain happy and active longer than someone who affirms all day how old they are becoming.

So, the questions really are these:

  • If affirmations are just a fancy name for the kinds of thoughts we think all day, do you choose to think in positive affirmation or negative affirmations?
  • Do you choose to believe you can or conclude you cannot?

Affirmations are inevitable travelers through your consciousness. They are an autonomic function of your mind that’s been dubbed “self-talk.”

You can’t stop them from appearing and you can’t necessarily change the ones that appear in your mind. However, you CAN control  which thoughts you choose to focus on. Remember, “where focus goes, energy flows.”

Whichever you choose, you will experience. Which kind of affirmation do you choose today?

Follow your bliss. Experience your bliss. Become your bliss.

Ray

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Laughter is the Best Medicine – Day 52 of 365 Days to a Better You

Laugh more. It’s good for you!

Thought of the Day
At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.

~ Jean Houston

Laugh, damn it, laugh! You’ve heard the saying that laughter is the best medicine. Think about it. When do you feel better than when you laugh?

Laughter is one of the few human experiences that can – at least for the moment – make us forget and transcend any problem. In the moment of laughter, sadness, depression, stress, and worry are reduced to zero. It stands to reason that the more we laugh the less we experience these negative feelings and emotions and, as we have talked about on this blog, positive vibrations are the basis for successful, happy action in the world.

Scientific research shows that laughter has an array of health benefits from stress reduction to a reduced risk of heart attack.

Laughter is a readily accessible transformational experience.  It requires no practice or years of training. It’s available any moment and anywhere you choose. By finding the funny side of life, you not only raise your vibration, you raise the world’s because laughter is contagious. By spreading it, you’re spreading health and well-being to the people around you.

You might remember this viral video from about 10 years ago. It still makes me laugh and that’s good for me, good for you, and good for us.

Ray

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Affirmations Are Still the Workhorse for Self-Improvement

This article was originally written in 2008 and posted to ezinearticles.com

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in blogs and information within the self-development community. In an effort to promote their own paths, some seem more than willing to tear down other self-improvement approaches.

It’s hard for me to imagine how tearing each other down builds anyone up or helps shift people or the world in the best directions.

Someone truly wanting to help people would admit that there are many approaches capable of helping people improve themselves, their life status, and their thinking. Each person should evaluate different options and determine what works best with his or her current situation.

Recently, I’ve read blogs by practicioners of several self-help methodologies just raking affirmations up one side and down the other. The bloggers called them “delusional”, “wasteful”, and “dangerous”.

I’ve seen stinging criticisms blaming affirmations for manifesting a state of denial. These strawman characterizations paint every user of affirmations as an 87-year old woman wanting to be an Olympic athlete or a depressed person trying to create a fictitious happiness.

Mostly, people who use affirmations are salespeople wanting to build their skills and confidence to make or exceed quota this month. Which salespeople do you suppose make quota? Those whose minds are filled with thoughts of “I can” or those whose minds are filled with “I can’t” or “I’m not sure if I can.”?

Athletes use affirmations to gain that razor thin margin of victory that having the mental edge can bring. Writers who face a blank page every day to earn a living use affirmations to keep them inspired through rejection letters and writers block. Dancers trying be mentally prepared for that big audition or looking to advance their careers use affirmations.

People use affirmations to stay motivated to exercise, to stay focused on a big reward they are giving themselves for their hard work, or to remain committed to their diets. People use affirmations to counter the volumes of negative information that works its way into their brains every day from mainstream media.

And yes, depressed people, like I once was, use affirmations to pull themselves up out of the hole they find themselves in. It’s easy to criticize from the relative safety of a happy, prosperous life. However, when you’re really down and out all you have is the thought, the hope of a better day.

Are all these people delusional? Have they bought into some destructive ideology of happy thoughts that hold no meaning in reality? Hardly.

I’ve said often in this blog that affirmations are just one tool in your self-development toolkit. Like any methodology they are extremely effective for some people and less so for others. There is no debate, though, that affirmations are very effective at doing one simple, but critical thing. Over time, they replace limiting, negative, and unproductive thoughts with empowering, positive, and productive thoughts.

I’m not sure why affirmations have become the favorite whipping boy for some supposed leaders in the self-development world. Maybe because so many people use them successfully. Maybe because they have a track record of success many other approaches aspire to. Hey, isn’t that kind of positive thinking delusional? :o)

What I do know for sure is that affirmations will keep motivating people to be their best (whatever that is for them at this moment) and aspire to more. Those who want to tear affirmations down should really consider whether that serves their inferred goal of helping others.

Follow your bliss. Experience your bliss. Become your bliss.

Ray Davis is the founder of The Affirmation Spot. He’s spent more than 25 years studying personal development and especially writing, recording, and using affirmations to achieve his goals. His eBook – The Power to Be You – offers 416 life-changing and original quotes, ideas, and affirmations to take you to new levels of achievement and reflection.

anunnaki_cover_full_colorAnunnaki Awakening: Revelation, Ray’s first novel,  is turning heads and opening minds. Humanity’s past is checkered, secret, and dangerous.

White House Correspondent Maria Love is on to the story of her life and with the help of an Anunnaki leader seeks to unravel and reveal history’s biggest conspiracy. The Awakening has begun!

Affirmations: Repetition and Belief I and II

Affirmations are a powerful tool to effect change, transform our thoughts and behavior, and generally enjoy a better life. I receive more questions on how to make them work than any other topic. Today I am posting links to a two-part article I wrote a while back discussing the role both repetition and belief have in successfully using affirmations.

Affirmations: Repetition and Belief Part I
 Affirmations: Repetition and Belief Part II

Many have found these two articles helpful in understanding affirmations and using them in their lives.

Follow your bliss. Experience your bliss. Become your bliss.

Ray Davis is the founder of The Affirmation Spot. He’s spent more than 25 years studying personal development and especially writing, recording, and using affirmations to achieve his goals. His eBook – The Power to Be You – offers 416 life-changing and original quotes, ideas, and affirmations to take you to new levels of achievement and reflection.

anunnaki_cover_full_colorAnunnaki Awakening: Revelation, Ray’s first novel,  is turning heads and opening minds. Humanity’s past is checkered, secret, and dangerous.

White House Correspondent Maria Love is on to the story of her life and with the help of an Anunnaki leader seeks to unravel and reveal history’s biggest conspiracy. The Awakening has begun!