Today I am filled with zeal and joy! Only good comes to me from every direction. My life is filled with blessings and abundance!

How often do you wake up with these positive statements ringing in your head? If you are anything like I used to be, it is more likely that you wake up thinking “ugh, another day.”

Our minds can get bogged down with old programming, and it starts running itself without any input from us. We then start to expect that certain things are more likely to happen.

If it rains: “traffic will be terrible this morning.”

If someone at work gets the flu: “I’ll get it next.”

If things are tough at work: “I’ll never get ahead, no one ever notices me.”

Financial difficulties: “things are so tough. I’ll never be able to make more money. There is just not enough.”

Turning 40 or 50 - “it’s all downhill from here. My body is just giving out.”

But this is all just negative programming, and if you think about it, you know that it’s not necessarily true!

But there is a way to combat old programming, and that’s through the use of affirmations. Affirmations are simply statements that you believe something to be true. When you make an affirmation, even if it’s not true in that moment, you are reprogramming how you think.

I learned something interesting in a seminar years and years ago. The brain does not know the difference between what is real and what is imagined! That is why it’s possible for a perfectly beautiful woman to believe that she’s ugly – because someone in her childhood told her she was ugly, and because it was such a painful statement, the programming stuck. That’s why an extremely intelligent person can believe they are actually stupid – because someone once told them that they were stupid. Or why if you believe your boss is going to yell at you, your body will react (with stress and upset) as if it has already happened, even if your boss never actually yells at you!

When someone says something mean to you, the emotional impact (the hurt and pain) of the statement causes your mind to accept it as the truth in that moment in time. So if someone says “you’ll never amount to anything” that forces a “groove” in your way of thinking. The next time you are trying something new, and find that it’s a bit difficult, instead of persevering, you may automatically revert to “I’ll never amount to anything” because of the strength of that groove that was previously cut in your mind!

Affirmations are the cure to the bad programming you carry around. If someone said “you’ll never amount to anything” you can counteract that with the affirmation “I am strong and creative and move forward with ease.” Each time you use that affirmation, you are cutting a new groove in your thinking, and weakening the old one. And as you use the affirmation over and over, that new groove gets deeper and deeper. So you do have to repeat the affirmations over and over and over again. The power of that first negative statement has been embedded pretty deeply, and that can sometimes take hundreds or even thousands of affirmations to remove.

If you start by repeating just a few affirmations in the morning on your way to work, you will notice a difference pretty quickly. If you say them out loud and with zeal, you’ll start to notice the difference right away! That’s why I love doing affirmations in the car.

Also with affirmations you have to affirm what you want, not what you don’t want, and you need to keep them believable.

So instead of saying “I don’t want to be overweight” or “I now weigh 128 pounds” when it’s obvious that you don’t, start by saying something affirmative and believable. “I am now releasing the need to carry this extra weight” or “Everyday I am working toward my perfect weight with total ease and harmony!”

If you feel silly saying your affirmations, just keep at it! It’s just a new habit you are creating, and soon these affirmations will feel normal and natural.

Affirmations are the best way to reprogram negative thinking. Whenever something negative pops into your head, think of a way to rephrase it so that it’s affirming what you DO want, and say it over and over and over again until that particular negative thought no longer pops in your head.

When used daily, affirmations help to heal the past so you can move forward into a beautiful future. You deserve a wonderful life, and affirmations can help you to acknowledge that ultimate truth!

I deserve all that life has to give me! I am Divinity in expression!