Why Affirmations Do Not Work?

Many of you positive thinkers would know of affirmations and how it works to uplift our life. Then there would be those of us who would have used affirmations but found it not working and left it for good. The question is why do affirmations work for some while it does not work for the others?

There are numerous answers to that question. Affirmations do not work because you are not going for the feeling, or you do not believe what you are saying, or the affirmations that formed are too lofty for your own subconscious to accept. But the main cause of failure of many affirmations is the negative tail-enders. What are negative tail-enders?

I came across the terms about a decade back, and it resonated so much. All the while, I thought that I had to write down some affirmations and read them when time permitted. Little did I know that affirmations are more than just words written in my book. A mental neural pathway ignited each time a topic that I want to turn positive was evoked.

Let’s understand the negative tail-enders a little more.

Negative Tail-Enders

Now, tail-enders are those constant thoughts that get activated in response to our affirmation. Let’s say you have been in situations where you always ended up scraping through life when it comes to money. You have seen more time in a month without money than with money. Your salary dissipates into thin air even as the month barely starts. You then realize that you have to do something about your condition. You learn about affirmations and are gung-ho about using them. So, you come up with the following affirmations.

“I am rich.”

“I have plenty of money to last through the month and beyond.”

These are awesome affirmations on paper. However, when you use it, it triggers your old beliefs from your subconscious. When you read the affirmations, your mind would attach some more words to the above words. It could sound something like this:

You read the affirmation as: “I am rich.”
Your mind attaches the following words: “although I have never seen it.”

You read the affirmation as: “I have plenty of money to last through the month and beyond.”
Your mind attaches the following words: “which is a lie.”

In other words, your affirmations read as:

“I am rich although I have never seen it.”

“I have plenty of money to last through the month and beyond which is a lie.”

Your supposed positive affirmations become a deep negative one. Can you relate? The highlighted part of the affirmation above is the negative tail-enders. These tail-enders, in effect, make you affirm the negative. If you don’t deal with the tailenders, you are basically affirming your current reality or, worst still, a stronger negative one. And that’s one of the reasons why your affirmations don’t work.

How To Deal With Negative Affirmations

Many energy exercises can help you to deal with such negative thoughts and tail-enders. Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), Third Eye (Yoga driven), and many others help us to deal with the negativity.

The most basic ones are to create affirmations that do not evoke past feelings and thoughts. For example, instead of

“I am rich.”

would

“I have transitioned to an ever-growing rich life.”

make more sense?

This is, in a way, checkmating the mind. So, you acknowledge that you were in a less than rich life, and further, you are growing from there. There is no opposition to it.

Think of affirmations that evoke your mind to accept the positive reality. The other way of doing it is using energy exercises to get rid of the negative thoughts and feelings. Both work. It is your choice, but the point is to deal with the negative tail-enders.

So, that’s Our Takeaway

Remember, not dealing with the negative tail-enders will make your positive affirmation a negative one. In fact, the negative affirmations so formed will be formidable because your mind believes in the tail-enders and therefore will evoke feelings. We all know that any affirmation (positive or negative) with feelings is a potent one. So, when your negative side has more feelings because of the tail-enders, you will end up believing and living that life. So, be careful.

Barring that precaution, forming affirmations is an exciting process and realizing a beautiful life is even more satisfying. So, enjoy the process!

Have fun creating your new present and future!

Image Courtesy: Yassay at Pixabay