It's a Great Day

Ah, it’s a wonderful day, today. Yes, it is, most certainly.

It’s a great day to be alive. It’s another day to learn.

Today is a day to give of yourself in labor.

Today is a day to play, to grow and to achieve your dreams… after all, you have dreams and you have but one life to achieve them.

Did you notice that? Those statements...

All of them are statements of belief - of conviction… of affirmation.

I also call affirmations self-instructions because that describes what they do. They instruct us how to feel and how to act. They affirm who we are at the deepest levels. They are the most powerful and the easiest tools to use for changing your emotions and the results you get in your life... IF you use the right self-instructions.

And if you use them A LOT.

You see, every moment of every day you are thinking. You can't stop it. Even if you are an experienced meditator, you would find it hard to turn off the pictures, sounds and feelings your mind serves up. Every minute of every day you are affirming what you already believe.

You are doing it this very second.

And in order to change your life, you must change your affirmations, your self-instructions… what you believe and accept as true.

If you doubt it, then you thought, “That’s not true.”

But guess what… That was an affirmation, too - a statement of belief and conviction.

In fact, every statement you've ever made or ever will make and every thought you've had or ever will have is either a question, an affirmation or an affirmative command.

“Is that true?” (that's a question)

“Yes that's true,” (That's an affirmation)

“Sweet!” (affirmation)

“Please leave,” (affirmative command)

“I am not going anywhere!” (affirmation)

“Sit down,” (affirmative command)

“This is interesting,” “I don’t know,” “This is boring,” “I'm hungry,” “I'm tired,” “This is never going to work,” “I feel incredible,” “I can't concentrate,” “This is easy,” “Lifting weights is invigorating,” “I hate sweating.”

All just affirmations… Self-instructions.

So anyone that says affirmations don't work has absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Zero. Because they are ‘working’ on you right now and they will ‘work’ on you until you shuffle off these mortal coils.

What's my point? (question)

Since your minute by minute affirmations (thoughts) represent your past, present and – most likely – your future beliefs and attitudes, if you elevate your affirmations toward what is most useful and empowering, you would enjoy greater success, better health and true peace of mind with very little effort.

Even if you’re already extremely skilled in some area of life, if you wanted to, you could enjoy even greater accomplishments by transforming your thoughts.

A large part of our research at Think Right Now International is to catalog and compare the beliefs, attitudes and actions of the world’s most successful, happiest people to the most unsuccessful, unhappy people.

They are always polar opposites.

For example, when the healthiest, oldest living people on the planet feel comfortably full, they typically say to themselves, “I feel just right.” And they stop eating even if a pile of their favorite food is still on their plates...

But what do people who suffer the most illnesses, pain and diseases do at the full mark? Yup. They often say things like, “One more bite won't hurt,” “It’ so good, I can't stop,” “Oh, it's small,” “I'll just eat light tomorrow,” “I'm still hungry,” “I can't throw this good food away,” “There's just a few bites left – might as well finish it.” And they continue eating.

In every discipline or area of life, we always find hundreds and often over one thousand differences in core belief and attitude patterns between successful people and those who routinely fail.

And the sobering truth is that the longer a person owns a belief (affirms it), the harder it is to change. The old saying that you can't teach an old dog new tricks is an old saying for a good reason. Because our minds don’t like change… it is uncomfortable to change.

You see, the pain you feel now might be bad, but at least it’s familiar. You are handling it. But when big habit changes happen quickly, it's doubly agonizing because they are unfamiliar…unknown. And the unknown can be frightening.

That's why when you read a self-help book, go to therapy or to a seminar, chances are excellent that you will do nothing different. Or if you do experience an improvement in your moods or habits, it's usually very short lived. Why? Because your long-held assumptions, beliefs and attitudes (lifelong affirmations) were never changed. You simply had a few more facts… So you unconsciously resist the change...

You found reasons why you couldn't continue, why you didn't like it, why it was wrong for you, why you couldn't succeed after all.

Because facts and logic alone is never enough with the biggest challenges of life.

If just knowing what to do guaranteed success, then everyone would get straight A's in school and would go on to have successful careers in their chosen field of study.

But they don't.

Out of every 100 students using the same text book, hearing the same lectures from the same teacher, only a few will score 90+ and even fewer will use their schooling to ensure success in career and life.

Because facts and logic alone are never enough.

Why? Because we are talking to ourselves all day long. In fact, our research found that most people's current thoughts (affirmations) are the same ones they had many years before. Most people have the same failure oriented beliefs in 2007 that they had in 1997, 1987 and 1977. If something frightened you 10 years ago, it's likely to still make your knees knock today. If you hate exercising now, you probably won't like it 10 years from now. And no matter how much gear you buy, you’ll probably still affirm (believe) the same things about it that you do now. If you are a disorganized mess maker now, you’ll probably be the same ten and twenty years from now.

Why is this so? I call it mental patterns. They are hard-wired into you from years of conditioning.

I have many clients whose core mental patterns are so disempowering, they suffer from panic attacks. They lose all control of their minds and bodies. But in most cases, when we aggressively work to alter their moment by moment thoughts which alters their core assumptions about themselves and about life, the 'disorder' called panic attack ends. This is true even if therapy has done nothing and the toxic psychoactive drugs they've been taking for decades have damaged their brains. Yup. Self-instructions are powerful.

Our research shows that without mental conditioning through massive repetition of positive opposing thought, the things you are bad at today you will still be bad at in ten years. In most cases.

“Same sh*t, different day” is a cliché because, unfortunately, it's true for most people.

Think of your usual thoughts (affirmations) as a paint brush that continues to paint the same colors on the same places on the same canvas… for the rest of your life. The longer you paint, the thicker the paint gets. It gets so deep that there comes a point where it feels impossible to change the picture.

“Quitting smoking is so hard,” “I’ll never figure this out,” “You make me so mad,” “Everyone my age is overweight,” “I'm just not good at this,” “I'm not meant to have a lot of money,” “I’m too busy to eat healthier,” “I'll never get caught up,” “I'm so depressed,” “I feel like I'm going to die,” “I knew it wasn't going to work,” “I need some chocolate,” “I'm so disorganized,” “There are no decent men out there.”

These kind of beliefs (affirmations) fill you with anxiety. They make simple decisions difficult, suck the joy out of your accomplishments, create illness and disease, take away your energy and zest for adventure. In any area of life where you cannot seem to succeed no matter what, I guarantee you that beliefs like those above are controlling you every minute of every day.

But they don't have to any more.

Ponder this fact... Every sentence you’ve read here is either a question, an affirmation or an affirmative command. Check it. Believe in affirmations now? Good. Step 1 is complete.

Now for Step 2. Pick any area of your life that doesn’t work, where you fail, feel fearful, hopeless or where your luck is never any good. It could be your poor diet, lack of fitness, anxiety/depression, career trouble, problems in the friendships/social arena, bad romances/sex, financial woes, poor organization, sports, study habits/test taking, memory, time management… any area of life where you are having big troubles or where you want to be a top performer.

Next, go somewhere by yourself and think about that topic. Notice your thoughts.

Whenever you notice a disempowered thought…one that makes you feel like crap, when you see a picture/movie of yourself failing or if you hear yourself say anything that makes you feel less capable, write down the thought or description of the pictures and feelings.

For example, if you want to improve your financial situation, you must get by yourself and listen to your inner dialog and notice your mental pictures about these issues. When you hear or see a rotten one, write it down. Then when you’ve done this for a while, take this list of problem beliefs/attitudes and write opposing statements in affirmation form.

So if you routinely get up late, don’t start your daily phone calls until 11:00, take long lunches, spend money you shouldn’t and never read investment related books or invest in appreciating assets, turn these beliefs, attitudes and actions around by writing down

opposing first-person, present-tense statements of affirmation. These statements will command your mind to believe differently, to feel differently and to act differently.

Take this new set of desired beliefs, attitudes and actions and copy each one down on a sheet of paper and live with those cards. Take it everywhere with you and read them with strong emotion upon waking, at lunchtime and before you go to bed. Say them aloud whenever possible. Commit to doing this and soon you’ll be taking positive daily action related to financial matters that are exactly like the best money-makers and money-managers alive.

If you think this won’t have an incredibly positive effect on your emotions and your actions, remember that that belief/attitude is an affirmation.

Suspend the doubt and follow through on this and you will have taken the most important step in your personal and professional development. Do this and nothing will be beyond your grasp. Your confidence will soar. Your motivation will last. Your follow through will be perfect. Any goal will be possible for you. Happiness will be your normal mental state.

These last statements? Just affirmations, right?