How To Use Affirmations To Help You Achieve Your Goals And Stay Focused
No goal has ever been achieved without some forms of positive reinforcement. It is simply hard to keep going for long periods of time at a goal without affection, encouragement and external motivation. Some people set goals only for the love and attention they’ll get out of the process.
Self-doubt can also creep in when you face setbacks. You might keep asking yourself, “Am I good enough? Am I strong enough? I can’t seem to reach my quota, maybe I’m not cut out for this after all.” When the tasks seem tougher than you expected them to be you’ll be tempted to procrastinate and give up. By tearing away at your self-image and security, fear and doubt silently kill off your will to achieve your goals.
Affirmations are a form of positive mental scripting that can undo years of bad mental imaging and behavior patterns as these can secure, uphold and restore your self-image during those times when your resilience falters. Here are some tips on how to use affirmations to help you achieve your goals and stay focused:
- Remind yourself of your good attributes. Make a list of your better qualities and save them for trying times. For example, never forget that you are a good person at your core, that you have a heart for people, that you are well-respected and capable of doing your job. This is not self-flattery, it’s just a reminder of who you really are at a point in time when you might forget yourself due to hardships. As you get older, you will find fewer sources of affection and trust outside of your immediate family. It then becomes easy for you to be susceptible to negative scripting which can ruin your self-image. If you can keep a reference of the qualities that keep the good in who you are, your humanity won’t be so easily compromised.
- Reflect on any negative scripting you’ve learned over the years and counteract these. Social pressures and projections may have ingrained a warped picture of yourself in your subconscious mind. Look at the labels that society foists on people: fat, lazy, ghetto, wannabe, preppy, hipster, and so forth. Then again, you might have been negatively scripted in very articulate terms: you are a sluggish child, you can’t ever be on time, you are bad with directions, and so forth. By assessing which aspects of your life are affected by negative scripting, you can set action plans to replace these with more positive outlooks and behaviors.
- Align your goals with your positive attributes. Mold your new scripts with your actions. If you’re trying to lose weight, see yourself as a disciplined person who’s trying to get better inside and out. If you’re lazy but you have a promising job offer, see yourself as a rising professional who would never even risk not being on time for work. You’ll unlearn negative scripting faster when your actions change and there’s no better way to go about it than to make your goals part of the process.
- Create visual representations of your affirmations as a reference and a source of inspiration. Write down your best qualities in a special notebook. Include uplifting quotes from authors you like. Make a collage of images that closely resembles you goals: a better looking body, better grades, a promotion at work, a new car, a bigger house and travel opportunities. Your subconscious will start picturing these things as achievable and naturally make ways for you to reach them. Visual cues also help us not forget about the things we value, and few things are more valuable to us than the integrity of our best attributes.
- Don’t stop using affirmations on a daily basis. Affirmations work through repetition. You are trying to condition your mind to see and believe the best things about yourself. This doesn’t mean that they are not true or that they were never there. While you undergo periods of self-doubt, it is easy to forget what makes you so unique and worthwhile. For as long as negative thoughts and behaviors persist in your psyche, you still need the power of affirmations to turn things around, so never stop using them.
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