How Affirmative Questions Are More Effective Than Affirmations

Affirmative questions or ‘Afformations’ can help you make the changes you want to improve your life.
Affirmations have been touted as a way to assist your mind in supporting what you want through aligned thinking. It has been shown to have a great deal of effectiveness when used properly. It’s important to know that just making positive statements alone may not bring about what you want, but it can be a help. There are other factors involved.

One of the most common factors that can detract from the effectiveness of an affirmation is your beliefs and perceptions. Most people are not fully aware of them all, yet they are a major controlling factor in their lives. If you make a positive statement related to something you want and it is not congruent with a belief you are not aware of, your mind will argue with the statement. After you have made the statement, your mind may come back with, “yea, right . . . not in a million years!” or “You’re not like that, stop trying to pretend.”

Part of your mind will make a comparison between what you are saying you want and the knowledge and experience you have collected up to this point in your life. You may say, “I am living an abundant life.” and your mind comes back with, “No you’re not, you’re poor, look at the evidence, and always have been.”  So does this mean you are stuck with what you’ve had? No, but you may need to do more than make affirmation statements to get your mind to assist you with experiencing something different.

In understanding how the mind works you can do things that has it working for your growth and progress rather than keeping you the same. One way is to utilize the minds natural tendency to solve and answer. I’m sure you are familiar with how your mind helps you come up with reasons why you should be upset about something you are upset about. How your mind chatter will be helping you to justify four feelings and prove why you should think and feel as you do.

The human mind is designed to solve or answer a need or unknown. Have you noticed how motivated people are to discover an unknown, or to  get information they don’t have? Pose a question or a need and there is a strong inner drive to get an answer. The mind naturally wants to come up with a way to fill in the void of the unknown. What sells magazines? Leading questions that create awareness of an unknown that a person craves to know. The headlines of many magazines are utilizing one of the most basic human drives, the need to know!

You can use this natural basic human tendency for your advantage in making changes in your life. Rather than make statements that your mind can argue with, make statements it wants to help answer or solve for you. Ask leading questions that direct your mind to work for you, helping come up with why and how you are as you want to be, do or have.

For example, if you want to be healthy and energetic and you have not been so in the past, making the statement, “I am healthy and energetic.” may get a negation from your mind. So instead ask your mind a question. Ask, “Why am I so healthy and energetic?”

Your mind will now be seeking ways to answer and satisfy your question. You have actually been doing this for a long time but probably in a negative way. It’s so common for people to ask themselves a series of questions that confirm the undesirable. “Why am I so . . . ?, Why do I always . . . ?, why don’t I . . . ? and so on. But this form of self questioning is not often used in a positive affirming way. Your mind will go about providing you answers, proof and evidence to whatever you ask it. The most powerful way to change your thinking is to alter the unseen patterns of thought that are guiding most of your life experience. Your mind will do this as it develops and integrates the answers to your questions.

Noah St. John labeled this kind of affirmative question ‘Afformations’ in his book, [amazon ASIN=”0061715743”]”The Secret Code of Success: 7 Hidden Steps to More Wealth and Happiness”[/amazon]. You can get his full explanation of using affirmative question statements to get your mind aligning with what you want, along with specific examples in many areas of life in his book.

Here are some examples on how to convert the non affirming questions and statements you may be saying to yourself:

“Why don’t I have enough money?”  to “Why do I have more than enough money?”
“Why am I never happy?”  to “Why am I so happy?”
“Why am I alone?”  to “Why am I in this great relationship?”

As Noah St John suggests, convert your negative questions into positive affirming questions about what you do want. This can be done with negative self statements as well as in. . .

“I’m a failure in business.”  to “Why am I successful in business?”

Using affirmative questions, or ‘Affirmations’, is a powerful way to change your self-talk, to alter the thought patterns you are unaware of, and to get your mind to go to work unveiling ways for you to be, do and have what you want.

If you take the time to integrate this practice into your life I feel you will find yourself getting some great results.