11 January 2016

Inner Confidence, Part III: Affirmation

by u/champagnehouse

We possess in ourselves an incalculable force which is often prejudicial to us, if we handle it unconsciously. If, on the contrary, we direct it in a conscious and wise manner, it gives us the mastery of ourselves and enables us, not only to save ourselves from physical and mental ills and ailments, but also help from others; and to live in comparitive happiness under any and all conditions.

-Emile Coue, “Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion.”

I get money, money is got. (I, I get it.) I get money, money is got.

-50 Cent’s “I Get Money”

I decided to revive a long-lost interest and try my hand at cartooning. But it was an unlikely dream, considering my complete lack of artistic talent and the rarity of success stories in that business. So I decided to try something called affirmations … I bought some art supplies, practiced drawing every morning before work, and wrote my affirmation fifteen times a day: “I, Scott Adams, will be a famous cartoonist.”

-Scott Adams, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of my Life

Today’s inspiration: Tony Robbins on how he uses affirmations

Introduction: Autosuggestion

I don’t know what’s spookier: when you picture an exact scenario for yourself that then plays out in reality, or when you simply repeat something to yourself and it comes to pass.

If you’ve read the Inner Confidence series thus far, you have an idea of how to start living more confidently as a matter of imagination and not willpower: visualization. You can visualize yourself as confident and suave (or, indeed, visualize any life you want) for about twenty minutes every night.

Think of those visualizations as “placing an order.” You’re placing an order in your mind as to what you want, kind of like going online and telling Pizza Hut or Domino’s what kind of pizza you want, and with what toppings.

Sometimes just placing the order via visualization is enough. You place it, you receive it, and you don’t even have to tip a driver. But other times, you’ll notice that you wake up and go about your day and you feel as though nothing has changed, despite your better efforts. “Arg,” you tell yourself. “I knew it. Why can’t I receive the actual answer to inner confidence and charm? Champagnehouse is full of shit!”

Little did you know it but you’re actually “cancelling your order” all day long.

Imagine if you had placed an order with Pizza Hut one minute, but then called them back twenty times to tell you not to bring the pizza. “Fine, fine,” they’ll say. “We’ll cancel it. Just stop calling us.”

When it comes to your subconscious view of yourself, the same exact thing can happen. You place an order with visualization…and then you go through your daily life telling your mind the exact opposite.

This is happening through a principle known as autosuggestion. Today it’s best known as “affirmations.”

What are affirmations? They’re simply thoughts that you have to yourself. You already have them all day long. “Argh, I’m so awkward” is an affirmation. “I’ll probably get rejected if I ask her out” is another.

If you want to change your inner confidence, you’re going to have to change it at its root cause: the very thoughts you choose to indulge.

This isn’t necessarily easy. It can be tough mental work. Undoing the habit of negativity can sometimes feel like trying to redirect a river.

But if you stick with it, you’d be amazed at the changes that can happen in your life. If you believe that you’re confident and someone insults you, your first instinct isn’t to pout and fret…instead you’ll notice your subconscious feeding you something hilarious to say instead.

But in all honesty, when you do make these changes, not all of them will seem that miraculous. When you’ve truly convinced your subconscious mind that you’re a confident, attractive person, and you start getting confident, attractive person results…it will feel natural. As if you were this way all along.

Napoleon Hill, Cory Skyy, and Affirmations for Self-Confidence

In Napoleon Hill’s “Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons,” you can read the following story:

He was a timid young man with a more or less retiring sort of nature. He was one of those who believe it best to slip in by the back door and take a seat at the rear of the stage of life. One evening he heard a lecture on the subject of this lesson, Self-confidence, and that lecture so impressed him that he left the lecture hall with a firm determination to pull himself out of the rut into which he had drifted.

He went to the Business Manager of the paper and asked for a position as solicitor of advertising and was put to work on a commission basis. Everyone in the office expected to see him fail, as this sort of salesmanship calls for the most positive type of sales ability. He went to his room and made out a list of a certain type of merchants [sic] on whom he intended to call. One would think that he would naturally have made up his list of the names of those whome he believed he could sell with the least effort, but he did nothing of the sort. He placed on his list only the names of the merchants on whom other advertising solicitors had called without making a sale. His list consisted of only twelve names. Before he made a single call he went out to the city park, took out his list of twelve names, read it ove a hundred times, saying to himself as he did so, “You will purchase advertising space from me before the end of the month.”

Then he began to make his calls. The first day he closed sales with three of the twelve “impossibilities.” During the remainder of the week he made sales two others. By the end of the month he had opened advertising accounts with all but one of the merchants that he had on the list. For the ensuing month he made no sales, for the reason that he made no calls except on this one obstinate merchant. every morning when the store opened he was on hand to interview this merchant and every morning the merchant said “No.” The merchant knew he was not going to buy advertising space, but this young man didn’t know it. When the merchant said No the young man did not hear it, but kept right on coming. On the last day of the month, after having told this persistent young man No for thirty consecutive times, the merchant said:

“Look here, young man, you have wasted a whole month trying to sell me; now, what I would like to know is this - why have you wasted your time?

“Wasted my time nothing,” he retorted; “I have been going to school and you have been my teacher. Now I know all the arguments that a merchant can bring up for not buying, and besides that I have been drilling yself in Self-confidence.”

Then the merchant said: “I will make a little confession of my own. I, too, have been going to school, and you have been my teacher. You have taught me a lesson in persistence that is worth money to me, and to show you my appreciation I am going to pay my tuition fee by giving you an order for advertising space.”

And that was the way in which the Philadelphia North American’s best advertising account was brought in. Likewise, it marked the beginning of a reputation that has made that same young man a millionaire.

The lesson I get from this is not to hound people on sales calls. The lesson was how the young salesman started. He didn’t start by making his sales calls and hoping for the best. He started by going to the city park, reading his list of names, and building his self-confidence from the inside. Then he took action that came from the same place.

Cory Skyy relates a similar story. After suffering a terrible setback, he started growing his confidence from the ground up by looking in the mirror and giving himself positive affirmations, making sure never to break eye contact. Over the course of several months, he noticed his entire life changing around him.

Brent Smith relates a story about a friend who used to shout crazy things in the shower, things like “I’m attracting women now!” and “I’m the man! I’m awesome.” Brent thought he was nuts…until it started working.

What is going on here?

Why is confidence arriving without any actual in-person evidence?

The relationship between thought and action is far more powerful than most people think; they just don’t take much care to adjust the thoughts they have all day, so they never notice their actions changing.

But if you sincerely walk around with a new lease on life because you’ve decided to change your thoughts at the core level, you’ll stop believing that your past is your destiny. You’ll start believing that what you think in the present is what really determines your destiny.

Four Types of Affirmations and How to Do Them

Visualization gives your mind a target to work on and gives yourself a new experience that your subconscious can hold onto in order to start holding a new belief.

Affirmations fill in much of the rest.

Affirmations are kind of like the food your mind eats. If you eat nothing but Snicker’s and drink Coke all day, then you’re going to get a bad body. Bad in, bad out. If you stick to a more wholesome diet, however, your body is going to respond in kind.

It works the same way with thoughts. If you visualize once every week and think bad thoughts the rest of the week, then you’re not going to grow more confident…the same way you can’t expect to lose weight simply because you ate a vegetable one day this week.

Affirmations are where the daily experience of the conscious mind and the “overall” experience of the subconscious mind meet. And you’d better believe that your subconscious mind is listening to everything you do, say, think, and write.

That’s why there are a few options you have when it comes to affirmations:

Written Affirmations
Verbal/Mental Affirmations
Mirror Affirmations
Gratitude Affirmations

Experiment with them all. Scott Adams of Dilbert has attributed his success to written affirmations. Cory Skyy swears by mirror affirmations. Brent Smith is big on gratitude affirmations.

But they’re all essentially the same thing: food for your mind.

Remember: your mind will not distinguish between any thought said in faith, no matter how real or unreal it is. If you say “Man, I suck with girls” with total faith, that’s what your subconscious mind will hold on to. If you say, “wow, I’m sexy” with the same faith…you know what will happen.

But don’t think about affirmations as will-powering your way to success. Willpower is not how the subconscious mind works. It’s how the conscious mind often thinks, but the subconscious mind only cares about what you believe and what you imagine to be real.

That’s why there are a few rules on how to best optimize your affirmations throughout the day.

What Every Affirmation Should Be:

Present tense. “I will be successful” is not as powerful as “I am successful.” If you want something to come about, you have to believe that the result is real and present, now. If your subconscious minds believes something is in the future, then it will probably stay in the future.
Positive, not a double negative. Why? Try not to think of a pink elephant. You just did, and that’s what your subconscious is getting. That’s why “I am confident” is 1000x better than “I am no longer shy.” Remember the pink elephant. Go toward where you want to go, not away from where you want to leave. It makes all the difference.
Brief. Try to create no more than 1-7 that you can repeat to yourself without consulting any notes. This is for repeatability and for convenience.

Basic Rules and Critical Steps

The more affirming you can do, the more likely it is that you’ll have success. I’ve had success with a number of methods, but the best is to simply notice every time you have the wrong thought (“I’m shy,” or daydreaming about rejection), to stop yourself as soon as possible, and to take the time and energy to replace it with a new thought. If you’re not as good at that, you might try simply doing a series of affirmations throughout your day while on a bathroom break. The key is: you want to keep planting seeds for your subconscious mind all day long, because this is the battleground between your new belief and the real world. You have to choose to see the world differently for your subconscious mind to respond.

Action steps:

Get out your notepad.
Create a one sentence affirmation that follows the rules above: it should be positive, present tense, and brief. “I am confident all day long and beautiful women constantly hit on me” is an example. Memorize your affirmation, because you’ll be using it all day long.
Create a longer affirmation you can use at other times when you want to get more immersive. A paragraph. Remember: keep it in positive language. “I am confident all day long. Everywhere I go, I have a smile on my face and people are charmed by me. Beautiful women are everywhere, and they constantly ask me out. I have tons of fun with them and have a blast everywhere I go, because I always bring the party with me.” You get the idea. If you must, keep this paragraph in your pocket so you can use it during the day.
Don’t try to make it feel good. If you’re doing it right, it should feel good as a consequence of doing it correctly. That’s emotional feedback that tells you your subconscious has received the message.
Any time during the day you feel the opposite or think the opposite of your affirmation, stop yourself and replace it. “I am confident all day long and beautiful women constantly hit on me.” Make sure you feel good, and then go about your day as normal in a spirit of expecting it to be true. Emile Coue, one of the people who made “autosuggestion” famous in the first place, insists that you should feel relaxed about it. Don’t make it a willpower thing. You can’t willpower your subconscious into accepting something. You simply think new thoughts and let the subconscious find its own conclusions.