It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. Once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.
—MUHAMMAD ALI
You will be a failure, until you impress the subconscious with the conviction you are a success. This is done by making an affirmation, which clicks.
—FLORENCE SCOVEL SHINN
“I am the greatest!” Muhammad Ali affirmed these words over and over again—and then he became them. Affirmations are one of the most effective tools for quickly becoming the person you need to be to achieve everything you want in your life. Affirmations allow you to design and then develop the mindset (thoughts, beliefs, focus) that you need to take any area of your life to the next level.
It is no coincidence that some of the most successful people in our society—celebrities like Will Smith, Jim Carrey, Suze Orman, Muhammad Ali, Oprah, and many more—have all been vocal about their belief that positive thinking and the use of affirmations has helped them on their journey to success and wealth.
Whether or not you realize it, incessantly talking to one’s self is not just for crazy people. Every single one of us has an internal dialogue that runs through our heads, almost non-stop. Most of it is unconscious, that is, we don’t consciously choose the dialogue. Instead, we allow our past experiences—both good and bad—to replay over and over again. Not only is this completely normal, it is one of the most important processes for each of us to learn about and master. Yet, very few people take responsibility for actively choosing to think positive, proactive thoughts that will add value to their lives.
I recently read a statistic that 80% of women have self-deprecating thoughts about themselves (body image, job performance, other people’s opinion of them, etc.) throughout the day. I’m sure that men do also, although it may be to a lesser extent.
Your self-talk has dramatic influence on your level of success in every aspect of your life—confidence, health, happiness, wealth, relationships, etc. Your affirmations are either working for or against you, depending on how you are using them. If you don’t consciously design and choose your affirmations you are susceptible to repeating and reliving the fears, insecurities, and limitations of your past.
However, when you actively design and write out your affirmations to be in alignment with what you want to accomplish and who you need to be to accomplish it—and commit to repeating them daily (ideally out loud)—they immediately make an impression on your subconscious mind. Your affirmations go to work to transform the way you think and feel so you can overcome your limiting beliefs and behaviors and replace them with those you need to succeed.
My first real-life exposure to the power of affirmations came when I was living with one of my most successful friends, Matt Recore. Nearly every day, I would hear Matt shouting from the shower in his bedroom. Thinking he was yelling for me, I would approach his bedroom door, only to find that he was shouting things like, “I am in control of my destiny! I deserve to be a success! I am committed to doing everything I must do today to reach my goals and create the life of my dreams!” What a weirdo, I thought.
The only previous exposure I had to affirmations was through a popular 1990s spoof on the hit TV show Saturday Night Live, in which Al Franken’s character Stuart Smalley used to stare into a mirror and repeat to himself, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!” As a result, I always thought of affirmations as a joke. Matt knew better. As a student of Tony Robbins, Matt had been using affirmations and incantations for years to create extraordinary levels of success. Owning five homes, and one of the top network engineers in the country (all by age 25), I should have figured Matt knew what he was doing. After all, I was the one renting a room in his house. Unfortunately, it took me a few more years to realize that affirmations were one of the most powerful tools for transforming your life.
My first first-hand experience using affirmations came when I read about them in Napoleon Hill’s legendary book, Think and Grow Rich (which I highly recommend, by the way). Although I was skeptical that the repetition of affirmations was really going to make any measurable impact on my life, I thought I would give it a shot. If it worked for Matt, it might work for me. I chose to target the limiting belief I had developed after suffering significant brain damage in my car accident: I have a horrible memory.
If you read my first book, Taking Life Head On!, you know that my short term memory was almost non-existent following my car accident. While this led to some pretty comical incidents, my memory was so poor that friends and family would spend hours visiting with me at the hospital, take a quick lunch break, and then return to have me greet them as if I hadn’t seen them in years.
Facing such a real physical limitation due to a traumatic brain injury caused me to constantly reinforce the belief that I have a horrible memory. Anytime someone asked me to remember or remind them of something, I would always respond, “I would, but I really can’t—I have brain damage and a horrible short-term memory.”
It had been 7 years since my car accident, and while this belief was based on my reality then, it was time to let it go. Maybe my memory was so horrible, at least in part, because I had never made the effort to believe it could improve. As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right either way.”
If affirmations could change what was, to me, the most justified limiting belief that I had, then they could probably change anything. So, I created my first affirmation which read: I let go of the limiting belief that I have a horrible memory. My brain is a miraculous organism capable of healing itself, and my memory can improve, but only in proportion to how much I believe it can improve. So, from this moment on, I am maintaining the unwavering belief that I have an excellent memory, and it’s continuing to get better every day.
I read this short affirmation every day, during my Miracle Morning. Still programmed with my past beliefs, I wasn’t sure it was working. Then, two months after my first day reciting my affirmation, something occurred that hadn’t occurred in over seven years. A friend asked me to remember to call her the next day, and I responded, “Sure, no problem.” As soon as the words left my mouth, my eyes widened and I got excited! My limiting belief about my horrible memory was losing its power. I had replaced it and reprogrammed my subconscious mind with my new, empowering belief, using my affirmations.
From that point on, having also added the belief that affirmations really work, not only did my memory continue to improve, but I created affirmations for every area of my life that I wanted to advance. I began using affirmations to improve my health, finances, relationships, overall happiness, confidence, as well as any and all beliefs, mindsets and habits that needed an upgrade. Nothing was off limits. There are no limits!
We’ve all been programmed—at the sub-conscious level—to think, believe, and act the way we do. Our programming is a result of many influences, including what we have been told by others, what we have told ourselves, and all of our life experiences—both good and bad. Some of us have programming that makes it easy for us to be happy and successful, while others—possibly the majority—have programming that makes life difficult.
So, the bad news is that if we don’t actively change our programming, our potential will be crushed and our lives limited by the fears, insecurities, and limitations of our past. We must stop programming ourselves for a life of mediocrity by focusing on what we’re doing wrong, being too hard on ourselves when we make mistakes, and causing ourselves to feel guilty, inadequate, and undeserving of the success we really want.
The good news is that our programming can be changed or improved at any time. We can reprogram ourselves to overcome all of our fears, insecurities, bad habits, and any self-limiting, potential-destroying beliefs and behaviors we currently have, so we can become as successful as we want to be, in any area of our lives we choose.
You can use affirmations to start programming yourself to be confident and successful in everything you do, simply by repeatedly telling yourself who you want to be, what you want to accomplish and how you are going to accomplish it. With enough repetition, your sub-conscious mind will begin to believe what you tell it, act upon it, and eventually manifest it in your reality.
Putting your affirmations in writing makes it possible for you to choose your new programming so it moves you towards that desired condition or state of mind by enabling you to consistently review it. Constant repetition of an affirmation will lead to acceptance by the mind, and result in changes in your thoughts, beliefs and behaviors. Since you get to choose and create your affirmations, you can design them to help you establish the thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors that you want and need to succeed.
Here are 5 simple steps to create your first affirmation, followed by a link where you can download free Miracle Morning affirmations:
The purpose of a written affirmation is to program your mind with the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors/habits that are vital to your being able to attract, create, and to sustain your ideal levels of success—Level 10 success—in every area of your life. So, your affirmation must first clearly articulate exactly what you want your ideal life to be like, in each area.
You can organize your affirmations according to the areas that you most want to focus on improving, such as Health/Fitness, Mindset, Emotions, Finances, Relationships, Spirituality, etc. Begin with clarifying, in writing, what you really want—your ideal vision for yourself and your life—in each area.
As my good friend Adam Stock, President of Rising Stock, Inc. once told me, “The wise begin with whys.” Everyone wants to be happy, healthy, and successful, but wanting is rarely an effective strategy for getting. Those who overcome the temptations of mediocrity and achieve everything they want in life have an extraordinarily compelling why that drives them. They have defined a clear life purpose that is more powerful than the collective sum of their petty problems and the countless obstacles they will inevitably face, and they wake up each day and work towards their purpose.
Include why, at the deepest level, all of the things you want are important to you. Being crystal clear on your deepest whys will give you an unstoppable purpose.
As my first Coach, Jeff Sooey used to say, this is where the rubber meets the road. In other words, your life gets better only after you get better. Your outer world improves only after you’ve invested countless hours improving yourself. Being (who you need to be) and doing (what you need to do) are prerequisites for having what you want to have. Get clear on who you need to be, are committed to being, in order to take your life, business, health, marriage, etc. to the next level and beyond.
Which actions will you need to take on a consistent basis to make your vision for your ideal life a reality? Want to lose weight? Your affirmation might say something like: I am 100% committed to going to the gym 5 days a week and running on the treadmill for a minimum of 20 minutes. If you’re a salesperson, your affirmation might read: I’m committed to making 20 prospecting calls every day, from 8am-9am. The more specific your actions are, the better. Be sure to include frequency (how often), quantity (how many), and precise time frames (what times you’ll begin and end your activities.)
It’s also important to start small. If you’re going to the gym 0 days a week for 0 minutes, going to 5 days a week for 20 minutes is a big leap. It’s important to take manageable steps. Feel small successes along the way so you feel good and don’t get discouraged by setting expectations too high to be able to maintain. You can build up to your ideal goal. Start by writing down a daily or weekly goal and decide when you will increase it. After a few weeks of successfully meeting your goal of going to the gym 2-days-a-week for 20 minutes, then move it up to 3-days-a-week for 20 minutes, and so on.
I am always on the lookout for quotes and philosophies that I can add to my affirmations. For example, one of my affirmations comes from the book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshal Goldsmith. It reads, “The #1 skill of influencers is the sincere effort to make a person feel that he or she is the most important person in the world. It’s one of the skills that Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and Bruce Goodman used to become the best in their fields. I will do this for every person I connect with!”
Another reads: “Follow Tim Ferris’ advice: To maximize productivity, schedule 3-5 hour blocks or half-days of singularly focused attention on ONE single activity or project, rather than trying to switch tasks every 60 minutes.”
Anytime you see or hear a quote that inspires you, or come across an empowering philosophy or strategy and think to yourself: Man, that is a huge area of improvement for me, add it to your affirmations. By focusing on these every day, you will begin to integrate the empowering philosophies and strategies into your way of thinking and living, which will improve your results and quality of life.
• In order for your affirmations to be effective, it is important that you tap into your emotions while reading them. Mindlessly repeating a phrase over and over again, without feeling its truth, will have a minimal impact on you. You must take responsibility for generating authentic emotions and powerfully infusing those emotions into every affirmation you repeat to yourself. Have fun with it. If you’re excited about an affirmation, it doesn’t hurt to dance and shout it from the rooftops!
• It can also be beneficial to incorporate a purposeful physiology, such as reciting your affirmations while standing tall, taking deep breaths, making a fist, or exercising. Combining physical activity with affirmations is a great way to harness the power of the mind-body connection.
• Keep in mind that your affirmations will never really be a “final” draft, because you should always be updating them. As you continue to learn, grow, and evolve, so should your affirmations. When you come up with a new goal, dream, habit, or philosophy you want to integrate into your life, add it to your affirmations. When you accomplish a goal or completely integrate a new habit into your life, you might find it’s no longer necessary to focus on it every day, and thus choose to remove it from your affirmations.
• Finally, you must be consistent with reading your daily affirmations. That’s right, you must read them daily. Saying an occasional affirmation is as effective as getting an occasional workout. You won’t see any measurable results until you make them a part of your daily routine. That’s largely what The Miracle Morning 30-Day Life Transformation Challenge (in Chapter 9) is all about—making each of the Life S.A.V.E.R.S. a habit so you can do them effortlessly.
• One more thing to consider: reading this book—or any book—is an affirmation to yourself. Anything you read influences your thoughts. When you consistently read positive self-improvement books and articles, you are programming your mind with the thoughts and beliefs that will support you in creating success.
• Get help creating and perfecting your affirmations...
• See a sample of my own personal affirmations...
• View and download highly effective Miracle Morning affirmations on everything from losing weight, improving your relationships, increasing your energy, developing extraordinary self-confidence, making more money, overcoming depression, and much more...