Here’s why positive affirmations are not enough

In my mind, Louise Hay is the queen of affirmations. Let me share a few of Louise’s affirmations:

• Everything I need to know is revealed to me.
• Life is a joy and filled with love.
• I prosper wherever I turn.
• All is well in my world.
• Loving others is easy when I love and accept myself.
• I trust my inner wisdom.
• Life supports me.
• Life created me to be fulfilled.

I mean, those are really wonderful, right? They feel so high vibe!

Here’s the thing. That’s not really true for everyone. In fact, they may not feel high vibe at all to you.

How can that be? They are affirmations, after all. They are positive affirmations. How could you possibly not feel good when you think them, when you say them?

Here’s what I know to be true: If you are not believing that positive-sounding affirmation, it probably doesn’t feel good to you.

There’s a gap in your belief. Where you stand right now and how you are thinking does not match up to that positive-sounding affirmation. So you feel negative emotion. You feel the friction of that gap.

Now, let’s be clear: Your Inner Being has so fully embraced all the positive affirmations. So your Inner Being has embraced All is well in my world. Life supports me. But you have a list of things that are wrong in your world. And you are not thinking life supports you.

So you feel negative emotion.

Which means that positive affirmation—which sounds so good—is not really doing anything for you.

Except shining a light on where your beliefs are not supporting what you want to create in your life.

Those positive-sounding words, as great as Louise Hay is—and she is fantastic, are not what Law of Attraction responds to. LoA is not responding to your words.

Law of Attraction is responding to how you feel. Law of Attraction is responding to your vibration.

How you feel, so the vibration you offer, is coming from the thoughts you think. And especially the thoughts you think with feeling.

We’ve all had moments when we are saying all the “right” things.

We sound so upbeat and positive. Like we are flying high.

But inside?

How we feel doesn’t match up. Inside, we are a ball of gunky emotion, and we are trying to put a positive spin on it with our words.

How you feel will always trump the words. Even the most positive-sounding words you could come up with. That’s why positive-sounding affirmations sometimes don’t work.

I invite you to embrace the concept that every thought you think is an affirmation.

Every thought you think.

The ones you say aloud. And the ones you never utter. The ones Louise Hay herself could have written. And the ones Louise would never have allowed her mind to entertain.

Every thought is an affirmation.

I no longer consider affirmations as just the positive-sounding, aspirational statements, which is what I used to think an affirmation was.

You can Google affirmations and you’ll come up with loads of sites that have lists of positive-sounding statements. That is what most of us think of when we think affirmation. Things like…

• I am an open channel for creative ideas.
• I am unlimited in my wealth. All areas of my life are abundant and fulfilling.
• I love myself just as I am.
• Everything I need comes to me in the perfect time/space sequence.

Those are great! Integrating these positive statements into your life can be a really cool pathway to positive change in your life.

But here’s what I think many of us are doing. We have a list of positive statements, affirmations, and we try to integrate them into our lives.

We post them on sticky notes and put them on the mirror. The screensaver on our computer is an affirmation. We have a reminder set on our phone to alert us with an affirmation. We say affirmations, we journal about them.

But every thought you think is an affirmation. Every thought is affirming the essence, the vibration, of that thought.

So if my self-talk is, I’m not enough, I can’t do anything right, That will never work, I’m affirming all those things. The not enoughness. The wrongness. The it won’t work.

We have to stop making this distinction between those potentially feel-good affirmations and the rest of the thoughts we think.

Here’s the simple way I want to put it: You are always affirming with your thoughts. You are always practicing your thoughts into beliefs that then shape the reality you experience.

Every thought you think is an affirmation.

Too many of us are affirming all the things we don’t really want in our lives. We are affirming the don’t like, don’t want. We are affirming unworthiness and fear and guilt. We are affirming worry and blame and doubt.

We are affirming the negative. We are affirming what is unwanted.

When we pick a positive affirmation and try to adopt it, we often struggle to believe in it.

So let’s say you’ve latched on to this affirmation: I prosper wherever I turn. You would very much like to believe and embody that.

Even though you say this to yourself and you write it on a sticky note that you put on your bathroom mirror, some part of you—maybe even a big part of you—does not believe it.

You do not allow yourself to align with this positive affirmation: I prosper wherever I turn. Yeah, but here’s all the evidence where that’s not true.

So this positive affirmation you very much want to embody, that you very much want to see evidence of, you actually resist believing.

You resist believing the very thing you want.

But…a negative affirmation? So a negative thought—oh my, is that easy to believe.

• There’s never enough time. That’s an affirmation. You easily believe it.
• I can never catch a break. That’s an affirmation. And you never pause to even question it.
• I’m just not good with money. Another affirmation. Affirming the very opposite of what you want, and yet you are so willing to believe it.
• Maybe I’m not worthy of what I want. Again, affirmation. You accept this negative affirmation as “truth” with very little hesitation.

Every thought is an affirmation. And most of us are way too willing to believe the negative affirmations and way too resistant to believing the positive ones.

Why do we do that?

You can only create what your beliefs support. I say that a lot because it’s one of those foundational LoA concepts.

• If you don’t believe you prosper wherever you turn, guess what? You will not prosper wherever you turn. It’s as simple as that.
• If you don’t believe you are worthy of a fulfilling relationship, guess what? You will not attract a fulfilling relationship.

“When we talk about anything—be it miracles or woe is me!—we deploy it into action.” —Pam Grout

Why are we affirming woe is me and so darn reluctant to affirm the miracles that could be ours?

I would love for all of us to turn this on its head.

In other words, let’s be really skeptical and reluctant to believe those negative thoughts. Those thoughts in opposition to the very life we want to create. Let’s be skeptical about those. Let’s doubt them. Let’s question them.

Then let’s be really eager and enthusiastic about believing the positive thoughts, especially the ones about ourselves.

“A simple shift of perception unlocks a treasure chest of new possibilities.” —Pam Grout

For instance, will you eagerly and enthusiastically embrace this positive thought about yourself: I am a joyful breeze entering a room. Did you mind go looking for all the ways that is true or all the reasons to disbelieve?

Or what about: Loving others is easy when I love and accept myself. Again, did you go to looking for evidence of how this shows up for you…or did you immediately pull out a mental list of how that’s not the case?

I want you to build the muscle of belief.

Your belief creates your reality. Stop affirming what you don’t want. Stop waiting for your reality to be thus and so for you believe.

It simply does not work that way.

“Life is very simple. We create our experiences by our thinking and feeling patterns. What we believe about ourselves and about life becomes true for us.” —Louise Hay

What are your thinking and feeling patterns? What are you believing about yourself? About life? Are you affirming what you want to create in your life? Are you affirming what you want to attract?

I want you to get skeptical about your negative thoughts. I want you to flip the paradigm: Allow it to be easy to believe positive, life-enhancing thoughts. Then I want you to find it really challenging to believe the negative ones.

“Everyday our opening mantra would be…Today, no matter where I am going, no matter what I am doing, no matter who I am doing it with, it is my dominant intent to look for what I am wanting to see.” —Abraham

Notice that’s not asking you to believe anything except that you are a participant in creating your reality. If your dominant intent is to look for what you want to see, then you will start to see so many positive aspects.

Here’s what I invite you to do:

• Embrace the notion every thought is an affirmation.
• Start affirming what you want to create.
• Choose your beliefs about yourself and about life.
• Shift your thinking and feeling patterns.

I promise, if you do this, the reality around you will shift, too.