By Royane Real

Many of us want to try using affirmations, but we're not sure which affirmation technique to use.  Sometimes we try one affirmation technique for a few days, nothing happens, and we conclude that affirmations don't work.

The truth is that for a lot of people, affirmations really do work.  Not always, and not for every kind of problem, but affirmations can be a useful technique to improve your life.  Affirmations seem to work best when you use them to improve your confidence and for personal development.   They can help you to reprogram your mind at a deeper level than your ordinary consciousness.

Many people get confused when they first try to use affirmations because there are so many different ways to use them.  There is also a lot of contradictory advice about how they should be used.

Here are just a few of the many ways that affirmations can be used.  You can speak your affirmative statements out loud, you can think them quietly in your mind, or you can make a tape of them and listen several times a day.  You can buy a tape or CD of someone else’s voice repeating positive messages to you.  You can also buy CDs that use fancy high tech subliminal messages that are supposed to bypass your conscious mind.

Another way to use affirmations is to write them out or print them by hand.  You can put your positive statements up all over the house.  You can add pictures or drawings to your written affirmations.  You can carry your positive statements with you in your wallet or purse and review them often.

When you say or think your affirmation, you can word it in the first person, such as “I am now relaxed when I speak in public.”  You can add your own name to the statement, such as, “I, Gerry, really enjoy talking in public.”  You can also repeat your affirmation in the second person, such as “You, Gerry actually enjoy making speeches.”  You can try the third person too, such as, “He really likes to make speeches.”

You can look in the mirror when you say your positive statements, or you can think them to yourself as you drop off to sleep, or you can recite them out loud in the morning.

You can put a lot of emotion into reciting your affirmations, or you can first get yourself very relaxed in a deep hypnotic trance.  You can try singing your affirmations using an uplifting tune.

Another way to use affirmations is to word them as a question.  For example, “How soon will I realize that I really enjoy talking to the public?”  Forming a question with the desired result inside it can be a way to bypass inner resistance from your mind.

Some people advise you not to take big steps when you create your affirmations.  They say you need to make small steps so that your mind won’t rebel and think your statement is impossible.  Others advise you to do the opposite.  These people say that you should create a statement that exactly describes the ultimate goal you are trying for, no matter how different that goal is from your current reality.

So, how are you supposed to choose the best way to use affirmations?

The best strategy is to experiment.

The good thing about using affirmations is that they don’t cost you anything except your effort and your time.  That means you can try a lot of different affirmation techniques and see what you prefer.  An affirmation technque that works for someone else might not be the best solution for you.  In fact, a technique that worked for you in the past might stop working after a while, and you may need to change your approach.

We all have different histories, different beliefs and different nervous systems.  Our lives are changing constantly, and so are our needs and our personalities.  No wonder it can be confusing to try decide what sorts of affirmations might help us.

Why not try several different affirmation techniques to see what you like.  That’s the best way to find out which technique will work best for you.

This article was written by self help author Royane Real.  Want to improve your ability to learn?  Check out my popular special report  “Your Quick Guide to Improving Your Learning Ability” at   http://www.lulu.com/real

Author of  “Your Quick Guide to Improving Your Learning Ability”  

 

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites