Incremental Affirmations

In place of fears, today, I want to talk a bit about incremental affirmations.
Most people have heard of affirmations. Its the repeating of a statement to yourself with the intention of changing a belief.

The theory behind affirmations is that we all "self-talk". That is, we are all talking to ourselves every second of every day that we are awake. Some of these things are good, like "I can really do this" and some of these things are bad, such as "This is never going to work out. I am not capable of this". Furthermore, repeated self-talk can actually influence the way you think about yourself, your beliefs, and eventually your behaviour. Affirmations are a way of replacing your random, misdirected self talk with deliberate statements designed to replace existing beliefs.

All of the books that I have read about affirmations talk about making statements that reflect the new desire. For instance:
If you wanted to earn $100,000 a year, but didnt feel it was possible, your normal self-talk would be "I can't do this. I'm not good enough. No one will pay me that much" etc.

To use affirmations you would replace this with a statement about how you will earn the money. e.g "I will earn $100,000 a year".

Some people even suggest making the statement as if you already earned $100,000 a year.

Now, I'm sure that affirmations work, because they are used by so many people with great success. But for me, the whole idea of telling myself something that I really dont believe, prompts a "whatever" response from my mind. An affirmation of earning $100,000 a year, when you are only earning $25,000, seems too extreme, too out of reach to be effective. Even for someone earning $75,000 a year, they may feel that $100,000 is out of reach.

The main solution provided to this situation is for people to scale down their aim. e.g. aim to earn $40,000 a year. This is certainly one way of doing it, but a smaller target, does not fire up the desire in the same way a big target does. And as Napoleon Hill says, desire is key.

But, sticking with a big target, if you feel it is truly out of your range, then contrary to what the books say, repeatedly stating something like that, does not eventually replace doubt with belief. For me, I continue to feel that it is too unrealistic to be credible.

And thats when I came up with the idea of the Incremental Affirmation. Keep the big target, but vary the certainty with which you feel you can achieve it. You dont have to beleive it will happen to begin with. Thats too much for your mind to cope with. But if you were to say to your mind it is possible, that it could happen, then the mind reacts to this better. "yes, it is possible, after all, anything's possible". And thats exactly the attitude to take. Anything is possible. It is remotely possible that a person earning $25,000 a year, can earn $100,000 a year, within 12 months. Its not likely, but it is possible. And thats all that matters. If you convince your mind that it is possible that somewhere it could happen, you have taken the first step. Then if you can convince yourself, that it is possible it could happen to you (Anything's possible), you have taken the next step. The next step after this is convincing yourself, that on the back of the remote possibility that you could earn $100,000 a year, it is possible for you to do things that increase the possiblity of it happening (getting more training, networking etc). Remember, each step is much easier, if you truly believe the preceding step. And honestly you havent said anything that is completely whacky or impossible. It is possible that anybody could earn $100,000 a year, and it is true, that they can do things that increase the chance of this occurring. Once you believe this, you can start ramping it up, by increasing the certainty with which you think this will happen, until it becomes absolute fact. And all this while you are doing the things that increase the chance of it happening (don't forget that!). By taking it in small steps, you have "tricked" your mind into believing something that it would never have believed if given to it in its final form.

Here is an example of the steps used in achieveing belief that you can earn $100,000 a year. (or $1 million a year if you want)

1 "It is possible that someone, somewhere has increased their income to $100,000 a year"
2. "It is possible, (its happened to others, so it can happen to me)that my income can be increased to $100,000 a year"
3. It is possible for me to increase my income to $100,000 a year (Note the shift from passive to active. First the increase was happening to you, now you are making it happen)
4. If it is possible for me to increase my income, then it stands true that "I can earn $100,000 a year"
4. "I will earn $100,000 a year" (An increase in certainty)
5. "I earn $100,000 a year by January 1st 2009" (The positive tense increases the urgecy, and the certainty)

I have to emphasise again, that I dont think affirmations by themselves will achieve your goal. Despite claims to the contrary, I dont think positive thinking alone will guarantee success. Of course believing that you can achieve something is a prerequisite to achievement, but this has to be backed up by action. And to get back to Napoleon Hill, the action should be based on sound plans. Action is essential.

If you have tried affirmations before, and found the "yeah right, whatever" phenomenon was a problem, try it again using Incremental Affirmations. But, remember, that you need to be patient. Affirmations, even incremental ones, take time. And you need to be able to practice them every day. If this is a problem use my 10 tips to help you remember to practice autosuggestion from an earlier post. Click here to read that post.