Emotional Reactions
Your emotional reaction to the material that comes to mind as a re-
sponse may be far more important than your intellectual response.
Whenever you have strong feelings about your response, compose
an affirmation to deal with those emotions. Some examples are:
It is OK for me to feel afraid.
It is safe for me to feel angry.
I am using my feelings of hostility in productive ways.
In the resolution of your personal psychological obstacles, a feel-
ing is worth 1,000 thoughts. Feelings are richer, three-dimensional,
more pervasive, and more honest than thoughts. Temporary, ex-
tremely intense body reactions are not uncommon. People report
brief periods of light-headedness, dizziness, blurred vision, shaki-
ness, spastic writing, and sleepiness in response to their affirma-
tions. Having such intense reactions verifies that you are on the
right track.
Take Appropriate Action
Affirmations cannot be a cure-all. If you want financial freedom but
devote all your energy to a dead-end job and are not willing to take
the risk associated with a business of your own, just changing your
mind won’t help you much. Start with changing your perceptions of
the risk you face. Affirmations can help you accomplish any goal,
but direct action is required, as well.
When to Switch to a New Affirmation
Switch to a new affirmations in two cases. First, use affirmations to
aid in the achievement of a particular result. Once you have
achieved that result, switch to a new affirmation. Second, as you
compose affirmations to deal with your responses, you may com-
pose one that has a stronger emotional reaction than the original
affirmation. If so, switch to the new one.
The results from any affirmation may not be instantaneous, be-
cause you are dealing with psychological material that likely was
learned during 20,000 meals with people who gave you conflicting
messages about yourself, money, sex, and other issues. However, it is
rare for two weeks of daily use of Power Affirmations not to pro-
duce significant progress on any desired result.
172 Mental Flexibility for Peak Performance