The last day of October isn’t a day that most of us would choose
to visit a beach in the UK, but stranger than the time of year
is the group of minds that met that afternoon. Stranger still
is the subject they discussed.
Imagine it: a golden sandy beach, littered with seaweed, bottle
tops and bird feathers; a place that had been battered by
gale-force winds in the preceding days. And with the setting
sun, the needles of the Isle of Wright in the distance, the
leading personal development coach, an expert hypnotherapist
and an acclaimed author began exchanging views with a passion
on an issue that hurts millions of peoples’ lives and is quite
probably hurting yours.
Let me tell you more.
The author laughed and then announced that he had worked on a
visualization and an affirmation a while back. That visualization
had him standing on a beach, in Christchurch, Bournemouth, in
November having just agreed the undertaking for a new house. His
affirmation backed up his coming success and he had four good
reasons for his laughter:
First, he laughed because only the day before he had agreed to
undertake a new property.
Second, he laughed because he realised that he had arrived on
the beach five days earlier than expected.
Third, he laughed because the property was not in fact in
Bournemouth – as he’d thought it might be - but eighty miles
west, and
Fourth, and most worryingly, he laughed because neither his
visualization nor his affirmation stated where the house would
be! And this is when the conversation on bringing what you
want into your life ensued, and this is where you can find
the answers to what might be hurting your life.
The author said he’d been researching ways spiritual teachers
claim to have brought things into their life more quickly and
mentioned he’d discovered that making this happen was all about
closing the gap between “willing” something to happen and
“experiencing” it in your world.
And here the leading coach threw the expert hypnotherapist a
challenge that clients had thrown at her in the past. “When a
person affirms something such as...” she said, pointing out into
the harbour, “I have a yacht” the mind immediately contradicts
the affirmation and says, “but you don’t”. The hypnotherapists
reply made a lot of sense.
He said, ‘The sub-conscious mind doesn’t understand reality. If
you tell it you have something then it believes you already have
it and will behave accordingly – it closes the gap.’
This made good sense to the coach. It’s the power of suggestion
at work. Like when someone says they are hungry and ten seconds
later your stomach rumbles. But she challenged the hypnotherapist
some more. ‘But I still know I don’t have a yacht?’ she said.
‘No, but if you keep saying you have then the mind will play
catch up and start finding ways to correct the dissonance
between not having and having.”
The author said, ‘I guess this is where standing up and saying
affirmations out loud becomes powerful. Because word puts out a
stronger pulse of energy than thought and therefore makes you
move forwards.’
“Yes,” the hynotherapist agreed. “People make negative
affirmations all day long. They say “I have no money. I feel
tired or depressed or ill and scared of spiders”. They say “I
don’t have the confidence to ask someone out on a date, go for
promotion at work” or “I need to sit down and have a cigarette”.
And all of this is just affirmation – but negative affirming,
instead of the positive. That’s why hypnotherapy is powerful.
It corrects problematic thought patterns and replaces it with
something positive.’
What really stood out for the coach in this conversation was
this: people are making negative affirmations all day long and
that creates a problematic thought pattern and destroys any
hopes of getting the things they desire.
It is really important here to make clear how powerful
affirmations are. It is all very well, using my example of
saying, ‘I have a yacht’, but when the negative kicks in,
‘but I don’t’, we have to catch it and not allow it to manifest
and we also have to kick out that negative talk, “I have no
money, I’m tired - ’ because all this creates is more lack of
money and more tiredness.
What can you do?
1. Write yourself an affirmation for something that you would
like to bring into your life. When you say it out loud notice
what self-talk occurs immediately afterwards. Is it positive
or negative?
2. If you have any negative talk after an affirmation, practice
catching yourself and then immediately make that positive.
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