Why YOU should practice affirmations

Affirmations will help you live a more fulfilled life!

Affirmations are one of those things that seem to elicit skepticism from most people who are introduced to them, myself included. And so, I’ve endeavored to investigate and try to understand why people are so attracted to them and why they might be effective.

An immediate problem with affirmations is establishing the causal relationship between the affirmations and the actual attainment of desire. While it is certainly the case that affirmations are not necessarily words — I think the strongest affirmations are non-verbal — they must nevertheless be understood as an indirect way of approaching the attainment of desire.

In a naïve physical understanding of the world, this might be seen as problematic on several accounts. How do words spoken in front of a mirror in the evening lead us to either riches or famine, and how do thoughts nesting in the darkest recesses of our minds land us in either heaven or hell?

It’s a dramatic line of reasoning — from thoughts to destiny — can the balance of our lives really hinge on such fragile and seemingly frivolous things? Are these not, as so many other relics of history simply words that sound pretty but are otherwise mostly nonsensical?

Years ago, we might have answered that what distinguishes something physical from something non-physical is whether that something is material or not, but with the development of physics, such an answer leaves much to be desired. To our senses, that distinction might seem intuitive, but in physics, we know that we can reduce the world we experience from the macroscopic material reality to the atoms that compose it, to the quarks that make up the atoms and the quarks to excitations in different quantum fields that are layered onto each other and governed by complex and sometimes mysterious mathematical laws and structures.

In this world of quantum fields we find virtual particles, things being multiple places at once, things existing but being nowhere in particular, objects that are entangled and interact instantly over enormous distances, Now we can ask the question, is this the same kind of “physical” as our experience of a table or something different?

I am not going to make the mistake of using a “quantum woo” argument to justify the use of affirmations, but I will definitively say that it is not as obvious what exactly “physical” is supposed to mean as we might commonsensically think.

It is difficult to distinguish between the “internal” and the “external” world because to some extent the external world must necessarily be a projection of the internal world. That is to say that whatever we perceive is only what we have the faculties for perceiving in the manner that we have the faculties for perceiving it.

There are layers to this intersection of the internal and the external. We are evolved to experience the world in a particular way. Colors appear to us the way they do because we evolved to see them that way and react to them in the particular way that we do. Apples are brightly colored and smell pleasant to us because we are, in a sense, built to perceive them that way and they are simultaneously built to appear to us in that way. Not only are we evolved to perceive certain things in certain ways, but in addition to these facts of evolution, there are ways that we prioritize our perceptions based on facts of our conditioning and who we are in the intersection between nature and nurture.

Just as our minds prioritizes the task of counting passes and completely ignores the existence of the gorilla there are innumerable such priorities made in our everyday lives, both consciously and unconsciously. By consciously shifting our focus we open our minds to previously “invisible” opportunities and paradigms.

In short, there are many plausible ways in which affirmations might enhance our lives in small and large ways. The discussion regarding mechanisms does not seem particularly controversial to me, or at least it doesn’t have to be; there is plenty of room within our present understanding of the world to accommodate this phenomenon. I think, however, that the greatest barrier to affirmations is not actually the mechanics or the understanding, the causality, or the logical structure of the whole thing, but rather some psychological barriers; affirmations are a difficult and oftentimes unpleasant practice.

How frustrating is it to be told, in the midst of some personal tragedy, to simply think more positive thoughts? If everything is emphatically not “alright,” being told that everything is a matter of how we think and of our perception of events seems inconsiderate at best. It is a rare person that can deliver such a message without sounding at least just a little bit condescending, and of course, it is rarely actually so easy as “thinking more positive thoughts.” Should we affirm a joy that does not exist? Love that does not exist? Kindness that does not exist? Fortune that does not exist? Wealth that does not exist? Health that does not exist?

We are all prisoners to our individual circumstances, our circumstances are all we know, and no one else knows our circumstances the way we do, not even those closest to us. That is existence, and in this sense, existence is isolation, fear, pain, limitation; circumstance. This means if we are born impoverished, we do not know what it means to be wealthy, while we may see wealthy people, we do not understand it in a deeply personal way the way they do. Similarly, if we are neglected, we do not know what it is to be cared for. It is difficult to seek and even more difficult to attain that of which we have no conception.

But whether we “have” or “do not have,” is always a matter of perspective, and that is precisely what affirmations are about; not losing sight of what is good in our lives so that we can continue to orient ourselves towards it.

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