14 Powerful Techniques To Implant An Affirmation Deep In The Subconscious

I’m working on a new affirmation. One that will erase many of my fears of judgment. Because it is so important, I can’t just leave it to chance that I’ll eventually believe it; I have to make sure that I will believe it.

Photo by femaletrumpet02

Affirmations work when they bypass the conscious mind and enter the subconscious mind. The conscious mind will critique affirmations, wondering if they will work, and maybe even thinking they are stupid. However, we all have messages we were told as a child that are now part of us. Some of them were helpful, others were hurtful, but all of them bypassed our conscious, judging mind, and became part of our thinking patterns, embedded in our subconscious.

The techniques below are all designed to distract the conscious mind and affect that deeper part of us. This is quite magical in some ways, but neuroscience assures us that it is possible and incredibly effective. I have used all of these techniques and all have worked. Some of them are easier than others, and therefore can be done more often. I’ve found it most effective when they are all used together for the same affirmation. With diligent application of several techniques on a daily basis, I was able to believe my words on a bone deep level in just under three weeks.

Written Techniques

Written techniques work as a sort of muscle memory for your subconscious. Similar to learning a new dance where you do the same moves so often you don’t have to think about them any more, writing an affirmation can also become automatic.

1. Write out the affirmation multiple times by hand. At least 10 times, handwrite the affirmation. I’ve filled pages with my writing. Before long the meaning disappeared and the writing was what I focused on. This may not work for you if you don’t like to write by hand or find you get cramps after writing for awhile. In these times, it may be better to switch to typing instead.

2. Type out the affirmation multiple times. This works especially well if you can type faster than you can write. When using this technique, I like to set a timer for once an hour to remind me to type out my affirmation 10 times. I also did this when I thought of it, even if it wasn’t yet on the hour. I kept all of them in a separate file or e-mail. Some days I ended up with over 100 typed lines in my document.

3. Type or write the affirmation on a card and read the card whenever you can. This one isn’t as much about training your hands to repeat the affirmation like the first two, but rather about training yourself to take the card out of your pocket and read it. The card also works because you don’t necessarily have to take it out of your pocket. If you are in a situation where it isn’t practical to read the card, but you can still feel it in your pocket, you can repeat the affirmation in your head as if you were reading it. The card serves as the trigger for the repetition.

Spoken Techniques

Spoken Techniques are designed to focus on the words, the repetition of hearing them out loud can be as if someone else is telling it to you.

4. Say the affirmation out loud 10 times whenever you can. Saying your affirmation will take only a minute or two. I find the best time to do this is while you are focused on something else like washing your hands, pouring a bowl of cereal, or getting dressed. If my hands aren’t otherwise occupied, I find that counting on my fingers reminds me to get in the full 10 times.

5. Say the affirmation out loud at least 10 times with as much emotion as possible. Many of the negative messages we believe about ourselves were the result of emotional experiences. Therefore, using emotion deliberately to emphasize a positive message will have a similar effect. Try shouting the affirmation or saying it with as much conviction as you can, even if you have to fake it at first. You could simply repeat the affirmation as above, but the emotion makes it more powerful.

6. Repeat the affirmation out loud, emphasizing each word in turn. By keeping track of which word in the affirmation is the next to be emphasized, you can distract yourself from the meaning of the words themselves. I find this works the best with short, powerful, affirmations.

Chanting Techniques

Chanting can be spoken out loud or silently in your mind. When chanting, the affirmation becomes a background speech, like overhead music you can’t quite hear, rather than a focus on the words themselves.

7. Repeat the affirmation as a mantra while meditating. The style of meditation I prefer is to find a quiet spot and concentrate on my breathing and let that relax me. In this case, instead of concentrating on my breathing, I concentrate on silently repeating the affirmation. I find that relaxing is sometimes easier because I have a thought to focus on - the affirmation - instead of needing to guide myself from my thoughts to my breathing.

8. Repeat the affirmation while exercising. It takes a little bit of practice, but you can get the rhythm of your movement in time with your affirmation. For instance, when walking, you take a step with each word.

9. Turn the affirmation into a song. Some may be able to start from scratch and write a little sing-song type beat around the words. I found it much easier and smoother, to form the words of my affirmation around the music I was listening to. Enya worked particularly well because I have a hard time understanding her words anyway, so it was easy to replace them with my own.

Ritual Techniques

These techniques I’ve found to be the most effective. However, they are also the most radical, especially the last two, and will not work for everyone, depending on your comfort level.

10. Write the affirmation out by hand and burn it or otherwise destroy it. The act of burning something that holds an emotional tie can be very liberating. Many people burn old love letters or other remembrances from times past. Burning your affirmation will have a similar freeing effect on your mind.

11. Write a letter to yourself explaining why the affirmation is important and then destroy the letter. This takes the above technique up a few notches. This gives you an opportunity to express more emotion and confront opposite, negative messages on a deeper level. In this case, burning or destroying the letter will help to give these emotions a finality and bring closure. This technique isn’t as much about the specific wording of the affirmation, but rather about releasing any pent up emotion related to the affirmation.

12. Repeat the affirmation while staring into a candle flame or other fire. This is a form of meditation, and I could have talked about it above. However, most people don’t regularly burn candles to look into them, or have a convenient fire. So, deliberately lighting a candle and watching the flame while you repeat your affirmation, whether out loud or silently, has a ritualized manner to it.

13. Turn the affirmation into a symbolic affirmation. It involves making an image out of your affirmation and concentrating on the image instead of the wording. It doesn’t matter how simple of fancy you make the image, from pencil on paper to elaborate collages created with an imaging editing program. The point is to make the affirmation into an abstract representation where words aren’t prominent. The resultant image and can be meditated on, burned, or posted where you will see it often.

14. Use your sexuality to add emotional power to the repeating of the affirmation. I saved this technique for last because it is the most powerful and it is the one that is the most “controversial,” given our society’s reluctance to talk about sex. With this technique, you use the power of arousal and orgasm to distract your conscious mind from the meaning of the affirmation. You repeat the affirmation out loud or silently, as a kind of chant, during sexual activity. This technique works with a partner, but the resultant awkwardness may be too distracting. It works just as well when done alone.

These are the top 14 ways I could think of to implant an affirmation. While this is a comprehensive list, I expect there are other ways I didn’t touch on. I invite you to leave any thoughts or additional techniques in the comments below.

Journal Photo by Paul Worthington; Shout Photo by paspa; Monk Photo by pasotraspaso; Candle Photo by skyseeker