Affirmations Are a Popular Way to Change Your Mindset
Many people use affirmations to change their thinking from negativity to positivity. For example, from poverty mentality to wealth mentality.
And affirmations really work for some people. While for others they do not work, but end up creating only a superficial veneer of happiness, while negativity persists.
Why do affirmations work for some people and not for others? And what are the similarities and differences to The Work?
I Got an Answer to These Questions While Talking with Dr. Sam Shay
Dr. Sam, as he calls himself, is an acupuncturist, chiropractor, functional neurologist, and online wellness coach from New Zealand. He is also an enthusiast of The Work.
He was interviewing me about The Work when the conversation lead to an interesting insight: affirmations are like doing turnarounds of The Work, but without doing the four questions first.
The purpose of the four questions of The Work is to allow the mind to experience the effect of believing a stressful thought before jumping to turn it around. If you jump too quickly, the mind rebels. It doesn’t feel listened to. And it’s not so willing to shift.
So Both Affirmations and The Work Are an Invitation to Move from Negativity to Positivity
But with The Work, you allow the truly stuck part to have its voice first. You get to rant a bit (on a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet), and then to notice the effect of thinking that way on your emotions, and on your life (question 3 of The Work). And finally to imagine your experience if that thought were absent (question 4 of The Work).
This lays the groundwork for going to the turnarounds. The stuck, crying part inside, has been heard, and seen for what it really is (a source of pain). With this groundwork in place, the mind is often very willing to consider the opposite (the turnarounds).
But The Work does not stop there. It asks you to find three or more genuine examples of why the turnaround could be as true, or truer. This allows the stuck part of mind and the wise part of mind to work together in a spirit of cooperation to shift from attachment and stress to openness and freedom.
That’s Why I Love The Work
It’s a very systematic way of moving from stress to freedom. I personally like the step-by-step approach. And I really like that my turnarounds are created especially for me from my own original stressful thoughts.
This makes each turnaround tailor-made for me. Each turnaround is my own personal remedy for each particular situation.
But I Don’t Discredit Affirmations
In general, positivity is truer than negativity.
It really doesn’t matter to me how I shift from negativity to positivity. If my mind is able to make the leap, and genuinely land, in the mindset of abundance through affirmations, then I have discovered a short cut. This is wonderful.
But most of the time, I have a slow, methodical, even stubborn mind. What works best so far for me has been systematic inquiry starting from my stressful story, and ending in genuine receptivity to my turnarounds. This keeps it very real for me at every step of the way.
I encourage you to experience The Work yourself by participating in one of my upcoming Two-Hour Taste of The Work teleconferences (the next guest facilitator is Grace Bell on Jan 10).
Have a great week,
Todd
“I suggest that you always use the four questions before applying the turnaround. You may be tempted to take a shortcut and get right to the turnaround without putting your statement up against inquiry first. This is not an effective way of using the turnaround. The feeling of judgment turned back onto yourself can be brutal if it occurs prior to thorough self-education, and the four questions do give you this education. They end the ignorance of what you believe to be true, and the turnaround in the last position feels gentle and makes sense. Without the questions first, the turnarounds can feel harsh and shameful.” — Byron Katie, Loving What Is.
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