When Affirmations Don’t Work

Affirmations are popular in success literature for good reason: if applied properly they can alter personality, increase strengths, eliminate fear, list goes on. They’re capable of creating not just temporary feel-good sensations but lasting internal change. 

The problem I see in the personal development industry is an advocate saturation for this method without giving the accurate how-to for using them. 

Saying “I’m gonna have a successful day” isn’t enough to produce lasting internal change; it does deliver fleeting feel-good sensations. Proof is in observing how the sensations dissipate the moment a challenge arises. 

If an affirmer feels good in the moment saying the affirmation, and continues to feel good as the day manifests according to plan, then crumbles into shambles when an experience throws off the affirmer, the affirmation [and affirmer] manifested no genuine power or true evolution. 

If an affirmation doesn’t work (produce lasting change), it means it hasn’t reached the subconscious, where the change authentically occurs.

Affirmation Inner Computer

The subconscious is the source for transformation, so the person needs to experience a trance state to access the subconscious to transform, or change.

The subconscious is an invisible computer that houses all our automatic programming, instincts, knowledge, preferences, etc. To create change we must access the existing program and rewrite it there, which then manifests in our conscious living. 

In brain science terms, we activate the prefrontal cortex to harness the information programmed in the cerebral cortex, mammalian and especially reptilian brain, or R-Complex. 

You can self-test or observe these programs in operation. 

If I say, “I’m gonna have a successful day,” and I have the program “I’m not a successful person” installed in my psyche, the affirmation won’t produce change since it conflicts with the existing program. 

It won’t matter how many times I say that statement. If I don’t acknowledge it at my core, the message will bounce off and exist as empty words.

If a person who is averse to compliments receives one about her beauty, she could reject it and could respond out of anger, or with a sense the other person is trying to manipulate her. Instead of receiving the compliment as acknowledgment of her beauty, the subconscious program sees it as a method for connivance. 

This can appear harmless at the surface, but if left festering long enough, this kind of internal rejection can repeatedly show up as external rejection of friends, family, potential relationships; she does not feel worthy of any compliments.

To access the subconscious, we need a technique that puts us in a receptive state. There are many: meditation, hypnosis, repetitive sounds, binaural beats, symbolism.