When I was 17 I went to Rockford, Michigan, to go to the Circle A Ranch directed by Skip Ross. One of the lessons Skip taught us was the importance of positive affirmations.

What are Affirmations?
Every thought you think, every word you say is an affirmation. All of our self-talk or inner dialogue is a stream of affirmations. We are continually affirming subconsciously with our words and thoughts, and this flow of affirmations is creating our life experience in every moment.

Our beliefs are just learned thought patterns that we have developed since childhood. Many of these work well for us, but others may now be working against us. They are dysfunctional and may be sabotaging us from achieving what we believe we want.
Every affirmation we think or say is a reflection of our inner truth or beliefs. This is our reality. It is important to realize that many of these “inner truths” may not actually be true for us now, or may be based on invalid or inappropriate impressions we constructed as children, which if examined as an adult can be exposed as inappropriate.

My brother Wes was shopping in Salt Lake City when he called me after making a very interesting observation. He told me, “I see many homeless people holding signs that read” “Homeless please help.” Wes went on to say, “Aren’t these people reading and writing affirmations every day that keep them believing they will be homeless when they hold up these signs.” My brother is right. Our subconscious mind uses the behavior patterns we have learned to automatically respond and react to many everyday events in our life that keep us doing the same things day after day, and year after year.

Our learned responses and thought patterns enable us to automatically respond to circumstances quickly and easily. Problems arise, however, if at an early stage some of the foundation beliefs on which many of the others are built were formed from a different perspective. Maybe the strategy was appropriate for a perceived difficult circumstance; however, often such beliefs are totally inappropriate for succeeding in the real world as adults.

You can use “Positive Affirmations,” which are usually short positive statements targeted at a specific subconscious set of beliefs, to challenge and undermine negative beliefs and to replace them with positive self-nurturing beliefs with emotion. It is a kind of “brainwashing”, only, you get to choose which negative beliefs to wash away. The way these statements are constructed is extremely important.

It is important to remember, of course, that everything we say and think is an affirmation. Using positive affirmation statements forces us to keep focused on our inner goals and reminds us to think consciously about our words and thoughts and to modify them to reflect our positive affirmation.