Why your affirmations don't work

There are over 1,000,000 affirmation videos on YouTube.

You will find affirmations for everything, for when you feel ugly, for when you really feel ugly, for "activating your goddess energy" while you sleep (because apparently your goddess has a snooze button).

Why is it that no matter how much you yell in the mirror about how capable you are, you still feel like a loser?

The Agenda

1. The problem with cookie-cutter affirmations

2. The power of subconscious scripts

3. How to create affirmations that don’t suck

The problem with cookie-cutter affirmations

Imagine that you are hosting friends and family for a celebration. You've prepared the most magnificent cake, towering layers of buttercream, sugar crystals cascading down the sides like a diabetic's nightmare.

You are going to feed this exact same cake to everyone. There's Uncle Jerry with his Type 2 diabetes. There's your vegan cousin who breaks out in hives at the mention of dairy. And there's that one friend who doesn’t like cake (gasp! yes people like this exist)

However, you, the gracious host, insist, "Everyone WILL eat this cake. Everyone WILL love this cake!!!"

This is what we do with affirmations.

Affirmations are sweet, too sweet. They sound good but spike a crash of “who am I kidding?”

There are over 8 billion people on this planet, with everyone carrying their own unique constellation of wounds, inner critic, and 3am panic attacks.

Everyone won’t have a uniform outcome reciting the same, "I am powerful. I am light."

The power of subconscious scripts

You are in front of the mirror on a Tuesday morning, staring at yourself and spiralling through every life decision that led to this bathroom and this growing certainty that you are a magnificent failure.

Your brain, bless it, realising you are about three dark thoughts away from googling "bridges near me" quickly shuffles through the thousands of self-help content you have consumed and comes up with…you guessed right, “I AM” affirmations.

You glare at your sad, tired eyes and declare things.

You: "I am light! I am love! I am wealthy!"

Your Subconscious: Remember when you were eight and your father said you'd never amount to anything? Remember how you had to make up an excuse about being tired because you couldn't afford to go out? How’s your love life going, Janet?

This brutal war between your mouth and your mind creates a cognitive dissonance that takes the punch out of the affirmations. You say it, but do you believe it? If you don’t believe it, how will it work?

How to create affirmations that don’t suck

You won’t rewrite your internal scripts by pretending the old script doesn't exist. You can't gaslight yourself into healing.

You can learn to speak to yourself in new ways that won't require you to lie to yourself, ones that honour where you are in your journey and open your mind and heart to future possibilities.

1. See yourself the way God sees you.

Think of a mother with unconditional love for her little child. She doesn't look at that child and think, you'd better earn my love. you'd better prove you are worthy of taking up space in this world. She looks at that child with a love so fierce it's almost violent in its certainty. That child doesn't have to do anything. They simply are, and that is enough.

This is how God sees you.

God doesn't look at you and say, "Try this affirmation until you believe you are valuable."

He says, "You are Mine. That's not an aspiration. That's a fact."

You are worthy. Truly see that you matter to your creator because if you know how to look, there is evidence of it around you.

2. Speak in evidence

Your mind will reject the "I am wealthy" affirmation when it remembers how your card got declined at Starbucks. If you are doing the work, these are examples of facts that it will not reject.

• "I am learning about money so that money can flow to me with ease"

• "I have survived financial stress before. I am well capable of solving problems."

Your nervous system relaxes when you speak in facts and is more likely to receive new instructions when you use the language of truth in your aspirations.

3. Build Bridges

An affirmation that works is a bridge between where you are and where you are going.

Let’s see some examples.

1. "I am confident" (your brain: "lol no you are not")

   Try, "I am building confidence. I have been brave before."

2. "I am wealthy" (your bank account: "about that...")

   Try, "I am learning to have a healthier relationship with money."

3. "I am healed" (your trauma: "hold my beer")

   Try, "I am healing. I am worth the work of healing."

4.  "I am fearless" (your nervous system: “am I a joke to you?”)

   Try, "I am afraid, and I am doing this anyway.”

You don’t heal by forcing yourself to believe what you don’t yet feel. You heal by speaking to yourself, not at yourself.

When your affirmations come from honesty, evidence, and divine identity, they become prophecies that fulfil in your life.

A final note

I may not know you personally…yet. However, I know some affirmations that are true about you.☺️ 

1. You are beautiful.

2. You are worthy.

3. You are capable of becoming everything you were designed to be.

I know, because this is how your creator sees you.

Talk soon,

Jumi.

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