This article shares with you ten situations in which affirmations don’t work, and how to avoid these pitfalls is using affirmations.
- You are immediately undoing the affirmation as you use it by adding a tag to the end of ‘I don’t believe this.’
While it is not necessary to be totally convinced of the truth of what you are affirming, you do at least need to have a feeling that with time and patience it may be possible to create the new belief and the new reality that you are using affirmations to create. Don’t undo your affirmations and expect them to work. That defies logic and reality. - You are not creating the feeling to go with the positive intention of the affirmation.
If you are repeating “I am happy, I am happy,” while you are holding onto feelings of misery, it should be no surprise that in this situation, your affirmations don’t work. Affirmations are not magic, and they need our cooperation in order to work. If you want to be happy, make up your mind that you are not going to wallow in despair. Get up and do something to change your mood, and then while you are bouncing up and down on the bed (impossible to stay miserable while doing that I find, and yes, very bad for the bedsprings) use your affirmations. When you are stating what is currently close to your emotional reality, you give yourself a chance to experience and reinforce what you want in your life. And the more you practice, the more of a natural reality it becomes.
- You are affirming things that are too far removed from your current reality to be remotely believable.
I have touched on this reason why sometimes affirmations don’t work in other articles, and it is definitely worth a mention here. If you are currently completely broke, affirming “I am rich,” is just going to set off every bit of resistance in your body to believing, or even saying something that is so clearly untrue at the present moment. You need to find affirmations that are just a step up from what you are currently thinking/feeling/telling yourself. In this example, you may be regularly thinking “I never have enough money, I am always broke, things are never going to change for me.” What you need to start affirming is something along the lines of “I want to believe that my finances can improve. I am willing to start thinking more positively about the future, and taking action accordingly. I choose to open my mind to the fact that there are people who have more money in their lives, and that I am just as capable, deserving and good at what I do as they are, and that if it is possible for them, it is possible for me.”
- You are affirming things that you don’t truly and genuinely want.
Sometimes you may be using affirmations to create things you think you ‘should’ want in your life. If they are not the things you deeply and honestly want, there will not be the internal desire to match the affirmations you are using, and on this basis, affirmations don’t work. Your higher self will not go out and create what you say you want, when the desire in your heart is for something different, and this is something to be thankful for. Get really clear and authentic about what you want before you start affirming.
- You spend more time dwelling on what is wrong in your life rather than holding onto a positive or at least neutral frame of mind that can give your affirmations a chance to work.
This, instead, is giving energy and power to the things you don’t want. If you are using affirmations for ten minutes a day, and stressing, worrying, criticizing and blaming for the rest of the day, your affirmations haven’t a hope of working. This is not to say that you should deny your negative emotions. Genuine emotions of all sorts need to be validated, but then they need to be released. Keeping a generally upbeat outlook is very important to your happiness and wellbeing, as well as for allowing your affirmations to work.
- You expect change overnight, and get frustrated and give up when it doesn’t happen.
This is a key reason why affirmations don’t work for many people. They just don’t give them a chance. It’s like going to the gym for a week, and deciding that since you are not in perfect shape, exercise doesn’t work! Affirmations are exercise of the mind; they work by gradually creating more positive ways of thinking, which in turn helps to maintain better feelings, and encourages positive action, and the outcome is a happier life. Simple, but not quick.
- You don’t use your affirmations with the frequency that they require.
For affirmations to be really effective, you need to use them every time you notice the opposite thought popping into your mind, as well as using them as much of the time as you can on a daily basis as a ‘soundtrack to your life.’
- You don’t integrate your affirmations into your daily routine using a variety of methods for maximum effectiveness.
If you really want affirmations to work, they need to be a part of your life. Find as many ways as you can to make affirmations a part of your life, and you will find they become much more effective than if you only use them once a day. You can say them aloud, say them silently, read them, and write them. Read them aloud and record it. Play the recording in your car, while you cook dinner, even while you sleep. Make posters or little notes of your affirmations and place them around your home and workplace.
- You have deep underlying beliefs, issues, or even ‘vows’ that are contrary to what you are affirming which need to be healed, transformed, and released before affirmations can have a chance to work.
If you sense that you have emotional blocks between you and the things you want to achieve, work at clearing these first. Once you have achieved freedom from these barriers that create resistance and struggle, you will be in a place where you can begin creating what you do want. EFT tapping (otherwise known as Emotional Freedom Technique) is a simple, gentle, and effective method of creating emotional freedom, and releasing beliefs, thoughts, and feelings that can cause suffering in our lives. I have found this technique to be extremely effective in my own experience, and the experience of those I work with.
- You don’t believe that affirmations can work, and as a result, you are blocking the results that they could bring you with an open heart and mind.
When we don’t believe that something is possible, we literally prevent it with the power of our thoughts from becoming possible or true for us. Trying affirmations with a conviction that they won’t work is pointless. If you are at least open-minded and hopeful about the possibility that affirmations can help you make gradual but important life changes, and committed to giving them a whole-hearted chance, there is every reason that affirmations will work for you.
As with most things in life, whether affirmations don’t work, or whether they do, is largely up to you. The people who insist that affirmations don’t work are not wrong. Affirmations obviously don’t work for them, but that by no means indicates that they won’t work for you. There are many, many people, myself included, who attest to the importance of affirmations as a tool for transforming their lives, and I firmly believe that if you follow the suggestions given above for getting the best results from affirmations, they will work for you too.
Sometimes affirmations don’t work, and there are a number of reasons why this can be the case. Rather than becoming discouraged and giving up totally on using affirmations, understanding why they don’t work can lead to being able to use them more effectively.
