The Viable Alternative

I’ve heard countless gurus, successful people, life coaches, etc. credit their use of affirmations as the reason why they were able to turn their lives around and become successful.

I’ve further been advised by a few coaches that if I wanted to become the person necessary to attract the life I wanted, to use affirmations.

There are many people who swear by them as the cornerstone of their daily personal development routine.

I’m sure if you’ve read any self-improvement books, you must’ve heard something mentioned about them.

People have credited them with helping them eliminate their insecurities, become more confident, think more positive, remove mental blocks, change limiting beliefs, eliminate bad habits, make more money, etc, etc.

Somewhere along the line, after hearing enough people swear by them, if you’re anything like me, you must’ve thought to yourself, “Hey, if these things have worked for others, then SURELY I can use them to benefit my life as well.”

Now, if you were one of those people who decided to try out affirmations and found that it worked like a charm, God bless you (and also screw you at the same time), because there are many people, present company included, that haven’t been so fortunate.

Sure, I’ve had affirmations work out for me from time to time, but I won’t credit them with radically improving my life like many other people have. There’s definitely been growth in my life over the past five years, but it definitely didn’t come from doing affirmations.

So, if you’ve been left confused and possibly frustrated as to why affirmations seem to work for everyone except for you, don’t worry, you’re not alone. I haven’t really experienced the full-on “hype” either.

This is the point where I take the words right out of your mouth and echo what you’ve been thinking, “Why? Why do they seem to work for some and not others?”

We know that at least some of the people who swear by them are telling the truth, so what the hell?

Well, taking myself as an example, as I’ve been able to dissect myself through what at this time is now almost seven months of therapy, it’s begun to dawn on me why affirmations work for some and not for others.

Follow me if you will for a minute and imagine a Third World country that’s been ravaged by war, famine, hunger and disease. Now, let’s say that as a result of the suffering of the people who live in this country, that a bunch of people from different countries decided to band together to send food, medicine, clothes and other humanitarian supplies to help alleviate the suffering of these people.

The thing is, if you simply tried to mail these supplies using government channels in that country or their postal service, several problems may occur. If the government is corrupt and inept, as happens to be the case with many Third World countries, they may divert the supplies for their own use so that they don’t even get to the people who need them. Or, greedy government officials may wind up selling what was meant to be free to the very ones that need them and obviously can’t afford them. Or, if these affected areas happen to be areas that are rebelling against the government, the government may even block efforts to get supplies to these areas or may even poison the food supply.

Moreover, if the country is at war and rebels are in control of the areas in need, the rebel army themselves may also block supplies to the people in need, or greedily use the supplies for themselves. To add, the postal system of the country may not be that reliable either so that you can’t depend on mail getting to its proper destination, never mind a bunch of supplies.

In essence, with an unreliable network already in place, only a fraction if any of the supplies will get to its proper destination if you were to solely rely on that. For the supplies to reach the needed source, ways must be found to get around the obstacles that would block the safe delivery of these items or else they would never get there.

What does this have to do with affirmations?

Well, many of us have such STRONG limiting beliefs, paradigms and mindsets that the affirmations we say are doomed right from the time they come out of our mouths.

Think about the parable about the sower in the Bible. When the sower scattered his seeds, it fell on four different types of ground. Some seeds fell among the thorns so that any fruit that grew was choked out by the thorns, some fell on the side of the road so that it was immediately snatched by a bird, others were scattered on stony ground so that there wasn’t enough of a root to allow it to truly take hold and grow, and the resulting fruit withered away in the sun.

For many of us, the moment we affirm to ourselves something good or positive, a flurry of negative thoughts, beliefs and mindsets are immediately triggered that we’re not even aware of most of the time that serve to eat away at our affirmations so that they never are able to reach and take root in the intended source – our subconscious minds. These limiting beliefs, mindsets, psychologies, etc we have that block our affirmations from taking root in our subconscious mind are like the corrupt Third World governments in the first example I gave that prevent the supplies from getting to the people or like the thorns in the second example that choke away any fruit that can potentially spring forth.

Through my therapy sessions, I’ve been able to discover all these different aspects of my ego that have the culprits as to why I had such poor results with affirmations.

One part of my ego has served to completely sabotage anything in my life if it felt it came to me too easy. As such, I always unconsciously pushed success away because I was afraid I wouldn’t deserve it because I didn’t work hard enough for it.

Another part of my ego, dubbed by my therapist “Mr. Figure It Out” wanted to constantly analyze EVERYTHING I was doing to make sure I was doing it “right” and fit into its system of logic. It would also constantly take stock of what people said to me, what mistakes I made, how well I did something so that it could “figure out” from these things what type of person I was to be at any given moment, since it felt that how people felt about me and how “perfect” I did things defined me. This kept me in a constant analysis paralysis mode, not sure of who I was and constantly insecure.

Another part of my ego, dubbed “Mr. Perfect,” upon me making a mistake or not doing something “perfect,” would immediately start berating me that I messed up and telling me to give up because everything was now ruined and there was no use trying anymore.

There are many more aspects of my ego that I won’t list for the sake of space that were just as, if not more demoralizing and debilitating as the ones I listed. But you can imagine, with one of these “things” waiting in the shadows of my mind to be triggered, it was no wonder why affirmations didn’t work for me most of the time. Like I said before, they were doomed right from the start.

This was The Illusion I was living in.

It’s important that we begin to take stock of what’s going on in our minds so that we can become aware of what’s stealing from us and blocking us. Not being aware of what’s going on in your mind is like being the owner of a company and not being aware of how well the product or service you’re offering is doing. Meditating, journaling and therapy are all helpful in becoming more self aware so you can begin to take charge of your mind so you can start getting the results you want in your life.

By taking a closer look, you may be shocked at what you find.

This is The Viable Alternative.

Hope this helps,

Ike Love