Affirmations Help You Live Consciously

The most important affirmation you can incorporate into your life is, "I am fully committed to feeling great 100% of the time," followed closely by any affirmation you can come up with having to do with self-confidence. Feeling great 100% of the time is self-confidence, in my opinion, and since self-doubt doesn't feel great at all, it's covered in this one. Say it as often as you think of it throughout your day--especially when you don't feel like feeling great--and it will change your life.

So what's happening when we engage in this simple exercise of affirmation? What's happening is, you're beginning to live your life consciously. Plato said, "The unobserved [i.e. unconscious] life isn't worth living," and as most of us who have suffered through a lot of unnecessary suffering at the hands of unconscious living can easily attest, Plato was right.


We have three levels of mind going on inside of us. First is the involuntary level. That takes care of ongoing bodily functions, like circulation of blood, breathing, digestion and temperature regulation that would be harmed by any amount of conscious meddling.

Second is subconscious thought. Look at this like a trunk you keep in your attic where you store habits of mind and body. Through repetition, we place certain thoughts and behaviors in there, some helpful, some benign and some positively harmful to our well being.

The third level of thought is conscious thought. Conscious thought reigns supreme over both involuntary mental functions and the subconscious mind. Through conscious thought you can alter involuntary bodily activity, like your heart beat, breathing and digestion (we call this "biofeedback"; subconscious thought can also wreck havoc upon involuntary functions, stomach ulcers being just one of many, many examples).

Through conscious thought you can also open up that trunk in your attic, take a look at what's in there--unconscious thoughts and behavior patterns--discard what you don't want to keep and place in there thoughts and behaviors you do want to keep.

Affirmations are the major tool for this trunk-opening operation. By consciously telling your subconscious what you want it to think and how you want it to act, you are restoring conscious thought to its preeminent position in your life. If the affirmation delves into new areas of life, through repetition your subconscious mind will reprograms itself. If the affirmation conflicts with instructions that are already there, the subconscious thought must be made conscious so you can make a choice as to which you prefer. The unwanted thought or behavior you've been living with all your life can then be discarded and the new thought or behavior put in its place. That's quite simply how it works. And it does, work. It's the miracle of human consciousness.

The subconscious mind is where the ego lurks. Once the ego becomes conscious, it disappears, bursting in air like the wobbling, over-sized soap bubble that it is. It will leave behind the negative thoughts and behaviors that had embodied it, but your conception of them as self will cease. You will no longer view this bundle of negative traits as your unique personality, worthy not only of protection but of outright promotion and glorification. You will be free to use this simple tool to root out negativity, leaving your eternal being prominently on display to inspire others to do the same. And in relatively short order the process will be complete.

The problem is not that affirmations don't work, it's that you won't use them. The ego's only hope of survival is to convince you that it couldn't be this simple, or that you really don't want to part with negative moods, habits, thoughts and behaviors just yet, or that they are in some way pleasant or necessary or simply part of the human experience. Negativity is none of these things. It is simply an illogical approach to life.

Photo credit: Effortless Abundance