“Funny how ‘question’ contains the word ‘quest’ inside it, as though any small question asked is a journey through briars.”
— CATHERYNNE VALENTE
Right now you are making hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unconscious assumptions about life and your relationship to it. These assumptions form the basis of how you go through life—positively or negatively, confidently or hesitantly, from love or from fear. However, the problem is that we usually don’t recognize our own assumptions.
For example, let’s say one of your unconscious assumptions is, Things always work out for the best for me. If you hold that assumption, what will your actions be? More than likely, your actions will be confident, your posture will be self-assured, and you will tend to persist even in the face of temporary failure.
But what if you hold the opposite assumption? What if you unconsciously believe, How come things never work out for me? What will your actions be then? If you hold this assumption, your actions will be hesitant, your posture will be one of defeat, and you will tend to give up at the first sign of resistance or rejection. In other words, your actions will be based on hesitancy, fear, and the belief of “Why even bother?”
That’s why Step Four, the final step of The Afformations Method, is:
The Afformations Method
Step Four: Take New Actions Based
on Your New Assumptions about Life.
The D.B.A.R. Cycle Concluded
Remember earlier when I introduced you to The D.B.A.R. Cycle? Well, here’s “the rest of the story” . . .
We began with desire: you want something.
Next comes belief: you either believe that you can be/do/have that thing, or you don’t.
Then comes action: your actions are based on your belief. If you believe that you can’t be/do/have the thing you desire, you won’t take much action, which means you probably won’t get the thing you desire, which means you’ll prove yourself right.
However, if you believe that you can be/do/have the thing you desire, you’ll take action, and keep taking action, for as long as it takes!
But then what happens? When you have a desire, believe, and take action, that means you always get everything you want, right?
Right?
(Crickets chirping)
That would be, ah, no.
I know that many people in our industry don’t like to talk about this, but the fact is that we have all had the experience of desiring something, really believing we were going to get it, taking action, and then . . . not getting it.
Whether it was the date with the pretty girl, the winner’s trophy at the athletic event, to lose 20 pounds, to land that big client, or whatever it was, you and I have both had plenty of disappointments, setbacks, failures, and things not go our way—even when we did everything right.
What this means, then, is that after desire, belief, and action comes the final step: result. You want something, you believe something, you do something, and then something happens.
Desired Results vs. Undesired Results
However (and this is one of the more frustrating parts about life), there are two kinds of results we can experience: desired results and undesired results.
Desired results are when you get what you wanted: you got the date, you won the trophy, you lost the weight, you landed the client, and so on. Undesired results, on the other hand, are when you don’t get what you wanted.
Now, if this were a typical success book, I’d say something like, “Work really hard, and you’ll always get what you want!” But you and I both know that’s not always the way it works. Sometimes you can work really, really hard and then not get the result you were hoping for. Of course, the opposite can happen, too: sometimes the very thing you wanted drops right in your lap when you’re least expecting it!
Let me tell you a true story. Once upon a time, my friend Jack Canfield had an idea for a book that would uplift people’s spirits. As he was meditating, the name Chicken Soup for the Soul came to him, so that’s what he decided to call the book. He and his co-author Mark Victor Hansen started shopping their book to every publisher they could find, hoping to get it published.
What do you think happened at the first publisher they went to? “Chicken Soup for the what? Ridiculous!” Door slammed in their faces. (I’m exaggerating for effect here, but the point is, they experienced what’s politely called a rejection.)
The second publisher? Slam! Same result. The third publisher? Slam! Same result. And the fourth and the fifth and the sixth and . . . you get the idea.
Let’s pause and look at what’s happening in this story. Jack had a desire: to get his book published. He had belief: he believed he would find a publisher for his book. He and Mark took action: they kept pitching their book idea.
And they kept getting results all right. The problem was that they were all undesired results: one rejection after another.
How many undesired results do you think they got before they got their desired result? Ten, twenty, maybe thirty rejections? One hundred and forty-four. That’s right: they received an undesired result—namely, the answer no—144 times in a row. On the 145th try, they finally got their desired result: their first yes. The rest, of course, is publishing history.
How many of us can honestly say that we would have kept going after experiencing that many undesired results?
How Your Assumptions Form Your Life
You are continually forming assumptions about life and your relationship to it, but most of them are unconscious. As a result, the majority of your actions are governed by assumptions that you may have formed years, even decades ago.
For example, if you grew up experiencing a lack of love, support, or opportunity, you might have formed unconscious assumptions like, I’ll never be very successful or I’m not good enough or Why can’t I catch a break? If those are your unconscious assumptions (beliefs), your actions will tend to be tentative, fearful, and anticipating failure—and your results will tend to be less than desirable.
On the other hand, what if you grew up experiencing an abundance of love, support, and opportunity? What then would your unconscious assumptions about life be?
Most likely, something similar to, I can live the life I choose or There’s plenty of opportunity out there, I just have to go out and get it!
The problem is, of course, that most of us did not grow up experiencing an abundance of love, support, or opportunity. In fact, the vast majority of human beings grow up in an environment of not enough—not enough love, not enough support, not enough money, and not enough opportunity. That’s why most human beings have formed negative, disempowering assumptions about their lives—and why their actions and results naturally follow.
Your life is a reflection of your assumptions.
However, there’s some wonderful news. No matter what happened in the past, no one can force you to think certain thoughts. You, and you alone, control your thoughts, beliefs, and actions.
If you continue to unconsciously ask yourself, How come I can never get ahead? your actions (or lack thereof) will spring from that negative assumption. But if you decide, right now, to change your assumptions by changing your Afformation to, perhaps: Why is it so easy for me to succeed?—and then change your actions accordingly—you have made a conscious decision to change your life.
The Chicken Soup for the Soul story I just told is a perfect illustration of this principle. Neither Jack nor Mark grew up with lots of money or opportunity. Both came from very humble beginnings. Yet they made a conscious choice that they were not going to be defined by their past.
They had a desire, they believed, and they took action . . . and kept taking action, even in the face of 144 undesired results (rejections). Because they persevered, even in the face of all those undesired results, they finally got the result they desired.
Remember that the point of The Afformations Method is not to find the answer to your questions. Since you are now going to be forming positive questions that assume that what you want is already true, your mind will work to find a way to make it so.
Can you see how this process must, if you let it, change your life?
How Afformations Saved Amy’s Life
Since I began teaching Afformations in 1997, not a single day goes by that I don’t receive grateful e-mails, cards, and messages from people around the world who tell me incredible stories of how using Afformations has changed their lives.
Here’s one of the most powerful stories I’ve received:
Hi Noah,
I wanted to thank you for what you’re doing. I believe your work saved my life.
I had always been able to pay all of my bills on time, and I had excellent credit that I was proud of. But one day, I lost my job, found myself unable to pay my bills, and eventually my credit was ruined.
I began to have constant chest pain and panic attacks and a debilitating feeling of terror that I couldn’t shake off. I had no job, and I couldn’t see how I could even start looking for a job with such a state of mind.
I was suicidal. I had to write myself a note that said, “Just for today, I will not kill myself.” I knew I couldn’t really kill myself and leave my husband alone in this mess, but I wanted to be free of it all so badly that I couldn’t get the thought of suicide out of my head.
A friend e-mailed me your link with the information about your online course. I’d read about 20 self-help books and courses over the last two years and thought, I can’t possibly read another book or do another course.
But then I read your free chapters, and I so agreed with everything you said that I decided to buy your Afformations System (home-study course).
I read your Chapter 4 about how to create empowering Afformations. Instantly, I felt a tremendous sense of peace wash over me.
I had been completely unable to sleep, rest, or escape my feelings of panic. I would lie awake all night, my heart racing with anxiety, while my husband slept.
Following your advice in Chapter 4, I immediately wrote an Afformation to myself that read, Why is it so easy for me to sleep well at night?
That very night I was able to sleep peacefully again, and my anxiety disappeared.
I have many more Afformations that are working well for me, and I’m on my way back to feeling as I did before.
Your work saved me an enormous amount of suffering and loss—mentally, materially, spiritually, and physically.
There aren’t enough words to describe my feelings of gratitude for what you’ve shared. Thank you, Noah.
Sincerely,
Amy
You Can’t Break Universal Law
I’m often asked: “How will I know when my Afformations are working?” (This question, by the way, typically comes from people who haven’t actually tried using Afformations yet!)
I’ve had thousands of people tell me that as soon as they started using Afformations, they felt an immediate sense of calm and peace, similar to what Amy described in her story.
They saw instant changes in their outlook on life, their emotions, and their health. And over time, they found themselves manifesting things that had once seemed impossible.
However—and this is a very important point—The Afformations Method is based on science, not magic. You cannot afform: Why am I so thin and healthy?, continue to eat unhealthy foods and not exercise, and expect to drop the pounds.
You can’t afform: Why is my business so successful?, do nothing to grow your business, never do anything different than what you’ve done in the past, and expect it to grow—any more than you would expect a plant to grow if it were never watered or nourished.
Here’s the bottom line: You cannot break the laws of the universe and expect to get the results you want. You can’t continue to do negative or self-defeating actions and expect to get what you want, even if you’re sitting there asking great questions! That is what’s called magical thinking, and it’s similar to believing that if you just buy enough lottery tickets and believe hard enough, you’ll win the lottery. (By the way, I’ve interviewed more than 50 millionaires and multimillionaires, and not one of them became successful by winning the lottery. They got there by doing the work that most people won’t.)
You can’t break the laws of the universe and expect to get what you want.
The point of Afformations is not to try to trick your mind, but to use it properly. You’re already using Afformations anyway, but most people are doing so unconsciously, in a negative, disempowering, self-defeating way.
That’s why following the four steps of The Afformations Method will enable your mind’s automatic search function to produce remarkable results that are in your favor, rather than negative ones that don’t benefit you or the ones you love.
Here’s What I Want You to Do Now
1. Take out your list of desires that you wrote in Step One and your Afformations you wrote in Step Two. (Have I repeated this step enough?)
2. For each empowering Afformation, list three simple actions you could take to make them true. For example, if your Afformations have to do with making more money, what are three simple actions you could do starting right now to make more money?
If you’ve written Afformations for weight loss, what are three simple things you could do starting today to help you lose weight?
3. Take the actions. Yes, now I’m asking you to do something! Start with the first action you wrote on your list and do that one. Then go to the next one, and so on.
Remember: If nothing changes, nothing changes. Afformations aren’t magic, they’re science. Refer back to the D.B.A.R. Cycle that I showed you, and realize that while some results will come quickly, others will take more time. Just keep taking action and writing your results in your Afformations Journal.
4. Join the Afformations Revolution. Because you’re reading this book, I’d like to personally invite you to join the Afformations Revolution. That means sharing the message of this book with as many friends, family members, and co-workers as possible in the next 48 hours. Another way to join the Afformations Revolution is to join me on our official Afformations fan page at www.AfformationNation.com.
You’ll feel inspired by reading other people’s Afformation success stories and how they used them to overcome challenges. Plus, you can share your own stories and meet other Afformers around the world—and it’s free!
How to Use Part III of This Book
Part III of this book includes empowering Afformations for the Ten Major Areas of Life. Of course, no book could cover every Afformation, since the number of Afformations you can create is truly infinite.
That’s why I suggest that you also use your Afformations Journal to write Afformations to suit your individual needs, in addition to the ones in this book. (Please note that some Afformations are repeated, because many fit in multiple categories.)
I’ve also organized each of the Ten Major Areas of Life into specific categories for ease of use. Now, when you find yourself stuck in any particular area, simply refer to the appropriate category for ideas on Afformations to help you get unstuck and produce the results you want faster, easier, and with far less effort.
Be sure to refer to our online programs, attend one of our live seminars, or join one of our exclusive mastermind programs. You can also get my free Afformations video training series at www.NoahStJohn.com.
And now, please enjoy your new, incredibly simple yet astonishingly empowering Afformations . . . and start reaping amazing results in your life!
