Why do I keep saying that affirmations don’t work?
And how about afformations? And how about subliminal suggestions, etc. etc. etc.
If affirmations worked, I would be long a millionaire. And many of the people I know, that are still struggling.
This is what I know about the development of false beliefs… and if my theory is correct, my theory proves my point.
I want to say though, before I start explaining my theory, that I have found a methodology that in the hand of the right practitioner can do miracles.
It is called Theta Healing, and it can eliminate a false belief in about 30 seconds, from the time of pinpointing it. This is what I am using now, both for myself and for my clients.
How do I know it’s working? Given the length of the time that has passed since I have learned it (a week? two? ago lol) my only clue is the new questions, insights, and behaviors that are available to myself and for my clients. I detail some of MY breakthroughs in other articles on my blog, and I am preparing a whole case study with an entrepreneur just now: we are in the middle of the series of sessions where there is a complex set of beliefs that need to be swapped out, a host of new capacities need to be installed, and the a whole new set of business needs to be designed from the new beliefs and capacities.
Remember, I am primarily a mindset coach for people who have ambition that they don’t measure up to… not a traditional theta healing practitioner.
Back to the theory of why affirmations don’t work.
Here is the process a negative core belief is born:
Act One: Something happens. You are young, and there is something slightly unsettling about what happened, but it’s inconclusive. You have some questions about you, about the world, about other people that you would be asking if you had the courage, if you could talk to someone, if anyone cared to listen or guess your questions.
Some people get lucky, and have an adult in their environment that intuits the question and answers it for them. These people will likely develop as winners in life.
Let me give you an example: You are four years old. Your mom and dad argue, your mom looks at you and says: not in front of the kids, they your dad leaves the house loudly banging the door behind him.
You don’t understand the content of the argument, but you understand that it had something to do with you, and the fact that dad left is your fault, somehow.
At that age there is still no time, so someone left has a certain finality.
If at that point your upset mother sat down with you and explained that your dad will come back, and that the fact he left, banged the door, or the whole argument had nothing to do with you, that you are good, that you are loved, would make this incident just an incident, not the starting point of a false negative belief.
But unfortunately your mother is upset, and has no idea that your little mind makes up stuff, and that you are now crippled for life: she only cares about her own upset. She is not bad, she just lacks empathy, and when she is upset, she lacks compassion. And who cares about a little boy or a little girl when it’s about HER life, anyway?
Act Two: You are trying to make sense of your world, you are trying to figure out what is wrong, so you can make it right.
You may go to your mother and try to climb up on her lap, but she pushes you away…
You think: hmmm, it’s not just dad, it’s mom too. There is probably really something wrong with ME! But what? you ask yourself, and the “wondering about” process that will last a lifetime begins.
Or you may be so scared that you just hide and wonder how you could avoid similar incidents by … fill in the blank.
But no matter what, your act two: wondering about what’s wrong with you begins.
Life will never be the same. Anything that happens after that incident will be some answer to the same question: what’s wrong with you?
Act Three: Something happens and it seems to be a definitive answer to your question: what’s wrong with me?
It could be: you are ugly, stupid, fat, clumsy, useless, some version of worthless. and though it is definitive, it is, at the same time, not-conclusive.
How is that possible? Well, if you really listen to the thought process: the question, the wondering about, continues.
Because some incidents prove, some disprove your original idea of what must be wrong with you…
Now, you enter
Act three: Your dance
Imagine having one foot nailed to the floor. What can you do? You can walk around it… fast, slow, walk you will.
The nail is the concern. The unanswerable question, the topic of the “wondering about.”
You can’t prove it. You can’t disprove it. You are stuck. You can’t let go… If you just knew the answer, life would go your way! You think.
Now, try to examine what happens if you add to this muck and mire an affirmation? Is it going to tip the scale, and pull the nail from your foot?
No. It will just add to the confusion, and keep the concern alive. More dance, now feverish, now with new hope, around your foot you go.
So, what would you suppose could work?
The answer is: anything that pulls the nail!
In a previous article I was talking about the seven modalities of healing, and I am intimately familiar with many.
In my participation in Landmark Education, I managed to pull one nail, oh, forgot to say, you may have many nails! 🙁
How did I do that? The concern I was dancing around was called: Am I smart or am I stupid?
The way I cut that conversation short and pulled the nail is: I declared that I was stupid. And asked: now what? Given that I know several millionaires that are stupid, I will be the next stupid millionaire.
It did work. Because what perpetuates the dance is the question…
Would have it worked had I invented that I was smart? The answer is no. In some weird way only when you voluntarily surrender to the negative belief, and at the same time pull the significance of the belief, the spell breaks and you end up with freedom.
Unfortunately that nail was not my main nail, my big nail, therefore it didn’t quite unstuck me, but it definitely made my life a lot more enjoyable and interesting.
I needed the theta-healing modality to find and pull the nail that, like a linchpin kept this dance ongoing and kept me going nowhere.
Not affirmations.