Have you ever wondered if Positive Affirmations really work? And why? They do because they are based on one of the oldest law of Self Improvement and Learning: Practice makes Perfection, or Repetition makes everything Easy. Like the Old Latins said: “Repetita Juvant“.

The first rule for Positive Affirmations to work is that they must be believable by you: if you don’t think something can work it’s pretty hard it will so if you keep repeating a kind of empty sentence which you know it’s false or doesn’t resonate with you it will hardly have any positive effect. So forget about “I’m rich” or “I’m healthy” and go for “I can be rich” and “I can be healthy”. Or “I’ll find a way to be rich” and “I’ll be healthy again”.

There is a big difference between stating that something false is true and stating that there is a possibility of something to happen. And this is where many Positive Affirmations fail: they are unbelievable and if your Mind doesn’t believe them they won’t work. Once you have a sentence which you think, or believe, is possible then the next step is to use it until it works. Persistence is the second rule. You have to use that sentence repeating it at least 20 times three times a day, especially before sleeping, until you see its effects taking place. You can have results in a week or a month but you must go on until it works. Because if you stick at it long enough it will.

What you want to change is probably a result of years so you can’t pretend to get results in days. That would be a kind of magic and we’re not talking about it.

Let’s say that you are used to lose your temper pretty often and want to calm down and be able to maintain control over your emotions. This comes probably after years of being used to start screaming and breaking everything around anytime you get angry so there is a kind of highway in your mind and anytime your pressure builds up the easiest and most used road is that one. It becomes a kind of habit, an automatic behavior which with times escapes your control and goes like on its own.

Pressure up-BAM! Pressure up-BAM! Pressure up-BAM!

But this has probably been a learned response to a stressful stimulus and as such it can be forgotten and substituted by a better one. Like keeping your temper and maintaining control of yourself. Think about learning to drive a car: at first you must think of everything but later it becomes automatic; it’s the same for behaviors and emotions whether positive or negative. At first you need to concentrate and put a lot of efforts but later everything becomes easier and second nature.

When you first begin to use Positive Affirmations it’s like creating a different trail in your mind, it takes time to transform it in another highway, time, efforts and dedication but it will come a day when getting angry in a split second will be a thing of the past.

This is how they work, substituting the “negative” highways of your mind with more positive ones and given that 95 percent of what we do and how we react to the external world is made up of habits learned throughout our life then we can more or less change everything. For the 5 percent which is our nature we can still smooth it and make it better if we are consistent enough.

This is how Positive Affirmations work and why they are so useful for Self Improvement: they are easy to use and they do work. You just have to use them long enough. You just have to use them long enough.

Practice make Perfection and Repetition makes everything Easy.

I was almost forgetting. If you want to be able to always keep your temper whatever happens this Positive Affirmation should work:

Whatever happens I can Keep My Temper and remain Calm, Balanced and in Control of myself.

Any question?