There are a couple of issues around using positive thinking and positive affirmations that people often ask me about. They are usually along the following lines: “why do I give up using an affirmation soon after I start?” or “why do I lose motivation for them a few days later?”
This is quite a common problem in the beginning when we start making goals and using new affirmations or ‘goal statements’ for the things we’ve never attempted before. It is quite easy to feel like nothing is happening in the first few days if you have never tried this type of self-help technique. You can quickly lose the energy generated by the initial excitement of your new goal and the possibility of its attainment. And when you lose the excitement for what you are telling yourself, it starts to lose its effectiveness.
Our new affirmations are often new thoughts and new concepts for the brain and consequently there are no established ‘pathways ‘for these new thoughts to travel along; they have to be created.
A good way to think about this and to help understand the resistance we encounter to the introduction of new ideas is with a water analogy. Imagine a stream of water running downhill for the first time. Without any outside direction it will try and take the path of least resistance. Over time the force of the water will carve new channels in the earth and rock to make its journey even easier. Eventually all the water flows down this same channel making it deeper allowing more and more energy to flow through it.
Our thought patterns can be imagined in the same way. Old thoughts take the path of least resistance; well trodden ‘back-roads’ in the brain. We think the same old thoughts day in and day out and it takes very little energy to maintain this status-quo and that’s the problem. New thoughts need to carve new channels in the physical matter of the brain and new neural paths, before they can flow freely. This is how habits of thought are set-up and it is why old habits are so hard to break; the electrical impulses of thought naturally move down the well-established ‘grooves’.
Can you see how it might be difficult at first when trying to build new habits of behaviour and shift our thinking in a new direction? If we have maintained the same thoughts and attitudes over a lifetime then behaviours can seem very stubborn and unwilling to change. Unless we persist with our new habit we don’t give ourselves the time for the changed thinking to create a new route or road to travel along. When we feel resistance in the beginning of any new enterprise, it is because the new thought doesn’t have anywhere to go. It is a pioneer, if you like, travelling in an unknown country. If we don’t support it, it will scatter and dissipate like the stream of water having its supply cut off.
Its’ easy to say “well this isn’t working”, “that’s just the way I am” or “I’ll never change now”. Change is always possible. We can always shift to a more positive attitude from a negative one, from an attitude of failure to one of success. To do this we must indulge the thoughts, the attitudes and the pictures we want to see happen in our lives. We must persist in our affirmations and practice. It will get easier very quickly.
You don’t have to believe in your statements but they must contain a ‘seed’ of energy within them to give them power! That seed of energy comes from believing in our own power to create the circumstances we desire in our lives; by believing in the power of our own minds.