The Bunk of Positive Affirmations

Imagine that you own a home, and after being gone for a few weeks on vacation, you come home to find that several walls have mold growing on them. It doesn’t matter how much, but there’s mold. Would you just grab some paint and paint over that mold?

That’s the analogy to start with for thinking about positive affirmations. Positive affirmations can be just like putting a cover coat over all those negative thoughts or ideas that you continue to have.

If you leave the paint long enough, the paint will wear off and the mold will continue to grow again. You can take it another direction and every year lay over a new coat of paint. But you know what – that mold is STILL there. It’s still growing and affecting the environment and sooner or later it’s going to have a real effect.

You can do the same with positive affirmations. Use them for a while and then forget and the old patterns come back. Or keep practicing and adding new ones. But you know what – those old thoughts are STILL there.  They are still under the surface, and just like instincts, sooner or later they will come back out in a moment of stress or tiredness or pressure.

Let me back up a little – I’ve NOT saying positive affirmations, or any similar behavioral change is not effective or useful. They can be incredibly useful and empowering. What I want to you to understand is that unless you clean up and address the underlying state of affairs – the mold in the paint analogy – the old stuff is still there, and will come back.

What do I mean by underlying state of affairs? I’m talking about beliefs, patterns, values, ideals, promises, rules that you have committed to throughout your life. In all likelihood you have consciously forgotten most of these. They are still part of your memory and your body awareness. Here’s an example – think of that time in third grade when you were embarrassed in front of your classmates and you swore you’d never do anything to look stupid again. Maybe you didn’t say it out loud, but somewhere in your being you said it. And it stuck, it became part of your bodily and cellular makeup.

Now I hate computer analogies, but think of those beliefs or rules, etc., like a virus on your computer. It can be fairly innocuous, but it’s still there. You’d never knowingly leave a virus on your computer. I’m also sure you’d never knowingly keep around a rule for yourself that is like that mold. The clue here is knowingly – you don’t consciously know you are following those rules.

Still, if you are using positive affirmations, you have a desire for your life to be different in some way, even better. The question is, how much does it matter to you? Finding and addressing those rules, promises, values, etc takes courage. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s hard. And it takes time.

So how do you address those beliefs, ideas, patterns, and more? There are many ways and any deeper discussion is way beyond this article, but here are some techniques, clues and ideas to research and look into. Natural Linguistic Processing (NLP), cellular memory and cellular healing (books: Biology or Belief, and Molecules of Emotion), Somatic Therapies including Hakomi, Cranial Sacral Therapy, The Journey, NeuroSculpting. An especially important idea is Forgiveness (book: Forgive for Good). There are many, many more, but these are the ones I’ve worked with and found to be especially effective.

Working with positive affirmations is good, but he question stands – how much does it really matter to you? The idea of courage, which has roots in the word for heart, is that courage is not the absence of fear, rather the knowing that something is more important (Ambrose Redmoon). What is it that’s important that you are willing to move towards?

Questions are the Answers

During the second session of a Coaches Training Program I recently began, we held a discussion about what it means to be a coach. The leader of the training put forth the idea that coaches are guides or facilitators, and that their primary tools are to ask questions to help the client discover their own wisdom and reveal what they know to be the best answers for themselves. While I’ve never formally coached anyone, when I talk with friends and they express something they want to change, my curiosity tends to lead and what comes forth is lot of questions. I innately know this idea and wholeheartedly resonate with the idea and approach.

As happens, this idea started to have analogies elsewhere in my life as well. That is whatever I’m doing I am a ‘coach’ just helping the activity ‘answer’ itself and find its own way! It is a rather fascinating way to approach life!

Let me start with something like cooking. First there’s the question of what do I want to eat? My body knows and so I listen to some possibilities. Open the fridge and ask, what’s in the fridge? Followed by what would go well together? Soon the meal starts to develop on its own. When it comes to spices, it’s the same – open the spice cabinet and just ask, what would be good on dinner? Most of the time I am pleasantly surprised by what the result is! And without opening a cookbook, or having to think at all.

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Considering the more personal side of self-discovery and self-growth, it is very similar. It is a plethora of questions. Sometimes the answers pop up quickly, sometimes they are incredibly clear. Other questions require time, to let the question stew and gather experiences before there is a semblance of articulation. There are times when writing helps as well. Really though what is revealed is revealed on its own, not by thinking.

Even in my career where I write software, the process is nearly identical. Our team is presented with an idea, something that needs to be written to support our products. We all begin with questions – what does it really need to do, what kind of performance is needed, how soon does it need to be finished? These do require input. Once we begin the coding it becomes a different kind of question – how do I write code, create a solution that implements the desired result. For any problem there are dozens (hundreds?, thousands?) or ways to get to the result. Most of the time, just asking the question of what the result needs to be begins the process of getting to answer. Then my fingers start to fly over the keyboard, my mouse moves across the screen – and then it begins. The code writes itself! Not entirely, but there is a large degree of truth to this.

The answers don't always come quickly, and they don't always appear as I would expect, nor are the answers themselves what I would expect - but with patience and faith, they do arrive.

Does this sound familiar? If so, great – see if you can engender this trust in the answers to reveal themselves!

If this sounds way out there – give it a try! Just ask the questions – and open up to answers. You actually probably do this and don’t realize it. When you go to a restaurant and you’re handed a menu, we scan the menu – what do I want to eat. Something usually pops out. It’s the same – let the answer pop out!