Affirmations

What are affirmations and why do they work? Think about your thoughts and the words you speak for a minute. What are they? Your thoughts and words are a stream of affirmations and beliefs. Every thought you think and every word you speak, you’re affirming what you know about the subject, and how you feel about the subject.

When you’re feeling depressed, you’re affirming you’re depressed for a variety of reasons which are all affirmations. When you’re feeling fear, you’re affirming the very reasons that make you fearful.

If you never work at changing your thoughts or words they will remain or become your beliefs and expectations, which will become your reality in time. You must make an effort at changing your thoughts and words, or it’s the experiences and circumstances in your life that will decide for you. For without a change in thoughts, life remains.

How can your life change if you don’t change your thoughts, and your affirmations? If your life would change regardless of your persistent fear and depression, that would mean thoughts and words have no power, which defies logic and law.

What happens when you speak a positive affirmation is that you interrupt the negative thought and you focus on a new thought of what you want to experience rather than the opposite of what you want. What God has given us is a tool to take charge of a situation and our lives. The tool makes sense because if we continue to dwell only on thoughts of fear or depression, we will remain in this state and we will eventually attract what we fear and what we’re depressed about.

Even if you have that thing you want, would you be happy to have it if you were dwelling only on thoughts of fear or depression? Essentially, you have two options, allow the adversity to speak for itself and take you wherever it leads, or you can speak to the adversity and to yourself, which inevitably changes your reality.

In order to change a thought you must introduce a new thought. When you introduce a new thought, you may not believe it yet, but what happens is when you keep on repeating it you’re not thinking so much of the old thought and you’re focusing on a new train of thought.

We can not have a life without thought, nor can there be a universe without thought, since this would defy all logic and the laws of the universe. How can we create without thought? Isn’t every idea from thought? Doesn’t all action and words stem from thoughts?

Now ask yourself this, how much impact do my thoughts have over my life? If you say my thoughts have no power over the unfolding of my life, then you’re saying your life is predetermined, and that you have no control. What control do you have other than your thoughts? What moves you to action other than your thoughts? If you say your thoughts have partial control over the unfolding of your life, then you’re saying your life is partially under your control. If you say your thoughts have complete control over the unfolding of your life, then you can say I am in control.

As we speak affirmations, we move towards the new thought because we speak about it and act on it. As before you were thinking, speaking and acting on your old beliefs but now you’re thinking, speaking and acting on a new belief.

So next time you face a dilemma or you feel inadequate, change your affirmations and know that the very things you’re affirming will inevitably become your reality, and know that the process will unfold just as you spoke it into being.

The Placebo Effect

We’ve heard of the placebo effect, where you take a pill you believe will be good for you, and it produces positive results. The placebo research states if we expect a pill to be effective at treating a disease, by our expectations, our symptoms will improve. Therefore, after ingesting a placebo pill, the outcome is depended predominantly on our focus and expectation. 

Wouldn’t the opposite happen if we were focused on a medicine harming the body? Meaning if our thoughts were focused on the medicine causing adverse effects, would it create more harm to the body? Denying this statement would be saying that our thoughts have no power over our physiology, which completely undermine the placebo effect research. So if that’s the case, and our thoughts have power, why not focus on the medicine doing what’s it’s supposed to do, minus the adverse effects?

The placebo effect has been on tv, in books and in articles, and the research on the placebo effect discovered it’s primarily our thoughts that are creating the outcome of a medicine. If expectation brings about an outcome, and if we’re constantly worried about something we’re ingesting, what are we projecting? We expect our concerns and fears and therefore we bring about our concerns and fears.

I do agree that medication has side effects, but if our thoughts can create healing through a placebo pill, why wouldn’t it be able to do the reverse if we’re constantly worried about what we’re consuming?

If the media is always reinforcing the concept that medication is harmful to the body, and if we believe this concept, what are we projecting again? All you have to do is type in medication on YouTube or google, and you get as much negative feedback about medication as benefits.

I believe we should be informed but there’s such a thing as too much information, and our physiology as individuals don’t all work the same with treatment. Why does one person feel benefit from a medicine, yet another feels only side effects with the same medication? Body chemistry plays a role, however, considering all the research that’s been done on the placebo effect, we have to admit our beliefs and expectations are crucial in determining our physiology according to treatment.

The problem lies in people’s perception of medication, and we’re so immersed in this world of side effects and reactions that we forget about the many more benefits. From an individual perspective, there’s so many benefits and effects from what we consume, so why are we trying to figure out the one right way for everyone?

It’s quite evident that medication can have adverse effects for some people, but if someone was allergic to peanuts, would you tell everyone to not eat peanuts? Would you say there are no benefits to peanuts considering all the research that’s been done on its potential health benefits?

We need to accept everyone’s beliefs, and we shouldn’t expect everyone to follow our way and only our way. There’s nothing wrong with sharing our opinion on the matter, but there’s too much diversity in the world to think there’s only one approach to healing. We should appreciate all the resources and technology that we so take for granted.

And next time you take a pill tell yourself it’s going to do what it’s designed to do minus the adverse effects, and don’t let anyone change your mind.