When Affirmations Don’t Work

When the topic of affirmations comes up, I can’t help but think of the Saturday Night Live skits, “Daily Affirmation With Stuart Smalley.” Smalley (a fictional character invented and performed by satirist Al Franken) was best known for his signature phrase, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone
it, people like me!” If you watched Stuart Smalley’s show you know that his affirmations were not effective for him or others he was trying to help. Now new research helps us understand why.

Through their research, psychologist Joanne Wood of the University of Waterloo and her colleagues found that if a person has poor self-esteem to begin with, and then repeats affirmations such as, “I am a lovable person,” they actually end up feeling worse about themselves.

Why does this occur? Because the positive statement contradicts their current self-image to such a degree that it ends up reinforcing to themselves that they really don’t see themselves as a “lovable person.” However, Wood’s research also showed that people with higher self-esteem do experience an improvement in their moods by repeating affirmations.

So positive self-talk is positive only when the person who’s doing it really believes it. If your pre-existing beliefs contradict the positive self-talk, it appears the beliefs will usually supersede and overrule the self-talk.

So what’s a girl to do? Start with changing your beliefs. Success coach, Heather Dominick-Kosmicki offers the following process for transforming limiting beliefs into positive, more productive ones:

1. Identify a belief that no longer serves you and write it down.

2. List out the feelings you experience when you think about this limiting belief.

3. Write the opposite of the limiting belief. For example, if the belief is: “I can’t make that work. I don’t know enough,” the opposite would sound like: “I can totally do it. I have plenty of personal experience with this.” This allows you to begin to see what is possible… but as we learned from Stuart Smalley, don’t stop there.

4. Find evidence from your life that support the statement you wrote in step 3. Write down any examples that come to mind that help you experience relief. The idea is to connect with a little relief, and even hope, so you are open to the next step.

5. When you feel the relief, write the next-step belief. This belief is one that is a little more positive and feels a bit better than the original belief you wrote in step 1. You want to be able to feel very little or no resistance to this new belief.

6. Next, imagine what it would feel like inside and look like outside as you live from this new belief. List the feelings, thoughts, actions, and experiences that would show up in your life once you fully adopt the belief.

7. Now that you know what to look for, list the evidence! Every day take note of what has actually shown up (on the inside and outside) that matches or supports the items on your list from step 6. By recording what you’re experiencing, you reinforce the new belief in your belief system.

This is where we take the age-old advice, “rinse and repeat.” Once the new belief becomes comfortable, go through the 7-step process again and create another next-step belief that incorporates an even more positive statement. In this way you are able to transform limiting beliefs into empowering ones without being stymied by your mind reacting to an extreme contradiction.

I invite you to share your thoughts and perspective on the article. Have you been successful in transforming limiting beliefs? How did you do it? To join the discussion, simply leave a comment.