05 Jan Do Affirmations Work? (Yoga in Heston & Hounslow)

Affirmations are positive statements such as “I am greater than any challenge life presents me with!”

It is claimed that if we repeat an affirmation over and over again, we will believe it and it will start to become true. Affirmations are often recommended by self-help gurus as a way of overcoming self-sabotaging and negative thoughts.

Affirmations work well for some people but can fail or even have a negative effect for others.

One reason affirmations may fail is that they target our conscious mind, but not the unconscious. If what we are trying to affirm is at odds with a deeply held negative belief, then we end up being caught in a bitter inner struggle with ourselves.

If you suffer from depression and believe that you are “ugly and worthless” and you choose to stand in front of a mirror and repeat an affirmation such as “I am beautiful and loved by everyone!” your mind may well react with the retort “No! You’re ugly and everyone hates you!” The entire experience would be painful, humiliating and trigger an inner war.

This internal conflict burns up a great deal of energy as well as creating massive tension in our bodies.

Our negative belief becomes stronger as it fights for survival and what we really wanted fails to manifest itself.

So if affirmations don’t work for us, what does?  Is there a method we can use, apply immediately and have instant and excellent results with?

A recent groundbreaking study examined the effectiveness of declarative versus interrogative self-talk (Senay, Albarracín & Noguchi, 2010).

Affirmations are a form of declarative self-talk. Declarative self-talk is about making self-statements. By contrast, interrogative self-talk is about asking questions.

In the study, four groups of participants were asked to solve anagrams. Before completing the task, the researchers told them that they were interested in handwriting practices and asked them to write 20 times on a sheet of paper either: “I will,” “Will I,” “I” or “Will.” The group that wrote “Will I” solved nearly twice as many anagrams as any of the other groups.

From this and similar studies the researchers conducted, they found that asking ourselves is far more powerful than telling ourselves something when we wish to create successful end results.

Questions are powerful because they probe for answers. They remind us of the resources we do have and they activate our curiosity.

This powerful strategy of asking questions can work better than affirmations because it acknowledges our negative thoughts and feelings and reduces the need to fight them. We start to become an ally to our unconscious mind, which in turn will elicit its cooperation. And the unconscious mind is fantastic at coming up with creative stuff.

We can follow these steps to apply the interrogative self-talk strategy:

• Draw your awareness to any declared self-statements, whether positive or negative.
• Tweak these statements into questions; e.g.: “I am” into “Am I?”
• Mull over possible answers to these questions and come up with additional questions. “What if..?” produces a particularly fruitful line of enquiry.

Eliciting your curiosity and creativity using this method will put an end to that draining inner struggle, which in turn will reduce the tension in your body and help you relax. It won’t cost you anything and it will position you to reap excellent end results.

My source for this blog post was a fascinating article called “Why Positive Affirmations Don’t Work” by Sophie Henshaw, DPsych 

Link to article: https://psychcentral.com/blog/why-positive-affirmations-dont-work/

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