The Hypknowsis.com Affirmation Method
by Dave Mason, PhD © 2009
Affirmations are simple and powerful, but finding the right affirmation can be difficult. This article describes a procedure for automatically creating affirmations that will have just the right words, and are guaranteed to align with your goals.
Preparation
Set aside some time, about fifteen or twenty minutes.
You will need paper and something to write with.
Spend some quiet time thinking about yourself and your situation and what it is that you want to change about yourself.
Write down how you feel
Then take the pen and paper and start writing lots of short sentences starting with ‘I’. For example ‘I am…’, ‘I feel..’, ‘ I want…’, ‘I need…’, ‘I think….’ . Use actual paper, not a word processor. The act of physically writing and forming the shapes engages your brain differently. Write on one side of the paper only. Just let the words flow. Do as many as you can as fast as you can. Don’t think about the exact words, don’t agonise over whether it is right or wrong or whether it is original or anything else. Just write. And keep writing for about ten minutes or until nothing new is coming out. Look over what you have written, and if anything else occurs to you, write that down as a sentence.
Create the strips
When you are done, cut or tear the paper into strips so that each sentence is on its own bit of paper.
Throw away any sentences that are facts like ‘ I am five feet tall’ or ‘I need to lose weight’. Throw away any sentences that you can’t do anything about, for example ‘I didn’t do well at school’ or ‘I need more time‘. Only keep the ones that are about feelings, attitudes, beliefs.
Sort the strips into piles
Now mix all the strips up and pull them out one at a time and put them into piles that relate to the same thing. Some strips might belong in several piles. That is OK. Write out a copy of the original sentence and put the copies into as many piles as needed.
Sort though each pile, there might be lots of strips or there might be only one or two. It doesn’t matter. There is no right number. Now get a fresh bit of paper and write a label for each pile, and label it with what it is about. Just sit back and become aware of any relationship between the labels. You might find you need to rewrite the labels several times. You might want to rearrange the piles.
Separate the strips
Now, take each pile and sort the strips into positive and negative. Notice whether any are contradictory, they show that you have a conflict about the subject. Read each negative strip aloud, and challenge the idea. Ask yourself, ‘How do I know this is true?, How would I prove to someone else that this sentence is true?’ Think about the sentence, and think about what you would advise someone else who said that, how you would get them to change, and what they would do.
Balance all the negative strips
Match up every negative strip with a positive strip. If there is no positive strip, then create one. Write a sentence that is the opposite of the negative one. Say it aloud. Repeat it and change it until it sounds just right.
Do that for each pile. You will probably find that your attitude to each pile changes and you might need to relabel the piles.
Write down you goals
When you have done every pile, get some more paper and create five bigger labels. These bigger labels are for listing your goals.
Write one of the words ‘Financial, Health, Self Improvement, Relationships, Community’ on a label. Now spend some time thinking about what you want for each goal, and write down some things you will have achieved in one year, and in five years. Only write three to five things for each goal. You can spend some deciding what you want and you can go back and change them as many times as you want. When you are happy that the things you have listed are what you really want, and are possible to get, write out a clean copy of your goals.
Find where the energy is for your goals
Now put the goal labels next to the piles of strips, and move them around and feel what piles will help to achieve that goal. Focus on finding the most powerful goal and pile combination. You might have to create some more positive strips.
Get rid of the negative strips
When you have got the arrangement the way you want, take away all the negative strips. Look at each one and imagine how you would like to get rid of it. You can actually burn them, or flush them down the toilet, whatever you feel is best.
Start focussing on your goals
The next step is to start getting those goals. You are going to put those goal labels in places where you will come upon them unexpectedly. Put one in the cutlery drawer so you see it the next time to go to get a spoon. Put one on the bathroom mirror. Put one on the driving seat of the car. Keep moving them around so they pop up and make you take notice. If you go out for example, throw one on the floor without looking, so it will surprise you when you come back. Then pick it up and read your goals again, and ask ‘What have I done today towards that goal?’. ‘What could I have done?’ and resolve to do it.
Start using your affirmations
What you have left is the positive strips. These are your affirmations. By going through this process every affirmation is linked to a goal. You need to find a way of going over these affirmations daily. What to do is to select a few of the strips each day and put them in your pocket, or on your desktop, and whenever you have a moment, take one out and say your positive affirmation out loud. You can select one when waiting for the traffic lights, or the next time you look at the clock, or any other time. Get into the habit of pulling one at random, saying the sentence and thinking about it leading to your goal. The constant repetition and the focus on what you want will make it all come true sooner than you ever dreamed possible.
Note from Ellie
I will be doing this as a project on The Unwinding Path on Monday, March 2. I hope you will join me. Also, please leave some feedback on this process as David would appreciate it.
Tags: Affirmations, David Mason
February 26th, 2009 at 1:06 am
Hello Ellie and David…
Ok, I love to see people encouraging others to create cahnge in their life and take some action, sincrerly, it is fabulous to see people investing energy in such endeavours…
My experience has been that affirmations are rather one-dimensional… That is, no imagination is engaged through words alone, they have no real depth and do not seem to access that part of the mind where change and self-improvement really aggregate.
Plus, I find that affirmations are also inherently limited by the often limiting patterns of language people use… Those of us used to this field heavily punctuated with the influence of linguistics, transformational grammar and progressive language of varying types are sure to know how to use our own language for maximum effect… However, we do tend to assume sometimes that the limits of one-dimensional language used by most people on a day-to-day basis is not going to affect their affirmations and subsequent effectiveness.
I’d love to see the same level of gusto and enthusiasm used showing people how to engage the full power of their minds with multi-sensory processes and instruction on using the language likely to elicit the most evocative and exciting responses.
Just my initial thoughts… I hope many people derive much success from this process… I just think the same energy could be used to elicit far greater and more enjoyable ways to attain the same outcome.
With my very best wishes to you both,
Ellie’s number one fan, Adam.
February 26th, 2009 at 8:52 am
Adam,
Good to hear from you!!! Thanks for the input. I am still all cottony-minded this morning, so please bear with me. I see your point about how language can limit things, but I do think David has a lovely handle on making people aware of negative thoughts and rephrasing things more positively. This alone is priceless for many.
Just for the sake of education, would you explain a little more about the idea of multi-sensory processes and using language to evoke positive responses?
Ellie
February 27th, 2009 at 1:52 am
Hello Ellie… Ok, it is tough to truly do full justice to something which I sometimes feel was not adequately covered in entire books I have written…
My belief is that when the will and imagination conflict… Will loses out. Therefore, if you sat in a place during your day to day life and kept affirming to yourself “I want my mouth to water, I want my mouth to water…” I do not think it is likely that it is going to happen…
However, if you sat in the ame place, used the same energy and engaged your imagination vividly… Imagining a lemon, glistening and cool from the fridge… Sliced into sections and then imagined sinking your teeth into it, feeling the juice flwoing around your gums and under your tongue… With its sharp, distinctive and tart flavour zinging through your mouth… Your mouth starts watering.
When you engage more of the senses, when you utilise more of thr brains capacity, much more occurs on many levels.
With language… How many people truly make an effort to utilise the words that get them into progressive states?
If you asked someone to explain someof their most blissful, ecstatic and joy-filled moments… The words that punctuate that description are those that are likely to induce more of a response… yet how many people actually use those words in their affirmations?
How many people affirm about things they do not want, rather than what they do want?
How many people elicit the language that engages all their senses and elicits responses on many levels when using affirmations?
of course, there are counter-examples and many who do employ this wonderfully well and of course, David does indeed have a lovely handle on amking people aware and rephrasing… I agree it is indeed priceless for many, and I think it is an excellent exercise for many - I am not suggesting otherwise.
I just think that using a modality such as self-hypnosis, employing the full range of senses, stepping right over the conscious faculty and using supercharged language that resonates with your unconscious mind is something that consumes the same energy and has gotten me and my students much more impressive results.
Only my own experience and much of my own opinion of course - a heavily biased opinion at that
Best wishes, A.
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Thanks for clarifying, Adam.
I just did the process on on The Unwinding Path (http://www.theunwindingpath.com/?p=106). What I discovered is that the process helped unjumble a lot of things that were beginning to block me. It sort of gave me a new way to refocus a bit. Many of the things that came out of it for me are things that I can use in my self-hypnosis practice, so I will definitely combine the two.
The other thing is that I do utilize affirmations with clients in a similar way to what David suggest doing. I have them put their goal (change) around in various places. Rather than contemplating them, though, I use them as more of a subliminal idea. Eventually the affirmation (or goal) just blends in and one is less consciously aware of it).