Emotional Wellbeing | 04 Dec 2023

The Power of Affirmations

Article - Min Read
Gain an understanding on affirmations and their power from our emotional healing experts Chandana Ganguly and Shikha Sud.

For those who come for emotional healing at Ananda, affirmations are a powerful tool that our therapists will give you. These are not universal affirmations but personalised affirmations that can really help recondition the mind.

Affirmations are powerful mantras that have the ability to change our energy field, our perception and eventually our reality. If thoughts create reality, affirmations are a way to ensure our thoughts are in alignment with what we want instead of focusing on what we don’t want.

Without realising it, most of us are unconsciously running on subconscious programs or limited belief patterns that may be holding us back from our fullest potential. Some of these limiting beliefs could be statements like "I'm not good enough" or "I can never do anything right" or "I don't deserve love" - which we consciously or unconsciously might be playing in our mind.

Thoughts have the power to bring up certain frequency of emotions. Emotions can affect our energy levels which in turn can affect our physical health. Our thinking patterns could be responsible for the repetitive patterns in relationships or events we attract into our lives.

Think of affirmations as a positive thought program that can be injected with conscious awareness and repetition, to change the flow of unhealthy or limited thinking patterns that may not be serving us anymore.

Affirmations work on two laws: the law of attraction and the law of repetition.

The law of attraction states you attract that which you are. By affirming to ourselves, we begin to programme our subconscious mind with the energies we want more of in our lives. The law of repetition states that we become that what we focus on repeatedly.

Affirmations then become a bridge between where we are and where we want to be in our lives.

Guidelines to forming affirmations

1. Let it always be in the present tense - the subconscious mind doesn’t focus on the past or future time. Affirm as if it’s happening in the present moment.
2. Let your affirmation be positive. Do not focus on any negations in your affirmation. For example, instead of “I don’t want to be scared”, let your affirmation be “I want to be courageous”. In case of negative words, our mind will focus more on that instead of what we want.
3. Keep your affirmations short and crisp. The shorter it is, the more repeatable it will be.
4. There are two times in the day when repeating affirmations can lead to powerful results - in the night before going to sleep and the morning, right after waking up. These are two windows we have to seed the affirmation into the subconscious- as the conscious or critical mind is drifting away, or still drifting back in.
5. Repetitive use of affirmations over a period of time can bring about some major shifts in the way we think, feel and live our life in the now. There have been instances where positive shifts have been noted even in physical health - that's the power of affirmations when said with conviction and belief.

Affirmation Practise for the New Year

Use this short practise from our emotional healers to set your intentions for the coming year.

1. Sit in a quiet space and regulate your breathing. Think inwards.
2. Think of 3 things you’re grateful for in 2023
3. Think of 3 things you struggled with in 2023
4. Come up 3 things you’d want to invite into your life in 2024. Notice now how having these things would make you feel.
5. Focus on the feelings and write them down. Those feelings become your affirmation for 2024.

Once written, you can repeat them, journal, or meditate on them.

Affirmations are a beautiful tool for those who choose to use it. Whenever you create a new practise, do it for at least 21 days for it to become an established habit.

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