Experience with Affirmations: Before going any further, I want to share experience with affirmations from me and some of my clients and students. The first story is everyone’s story.
Everyone’s Story
People are amazing and complex and thoughtful. In the beginning of digging deeper into themselves, many folks confuse the destination with the journey. If the destination can be clearly defined, they believe, then the journey will be over quickly and be more successful.
However, life is the journey. The journey is never done.
The destination is simply the direction which gets the journey going. The direction will change multiple times along the way.
The journey of life begins with one step made here, now.
Success isn’t arriving at the destination. Success is a present moment of experience of this step, here, now.
Here’s a great affirmation to help move awareness and experience in this direction.
The journey of my life begins here, now with this step.
Mariah’s Story
Mariah, one of my earliest students, was a very productive person and owner of her own very successful business.
Her success was due in large part to her relentless push to “be perfect.”
In working together, I suggested affirmations as a way to release the stress causing both emotional and physical breakdown.
At first, she refused saying, “I know what I need to know.”
Several months later, still highly stressed, Mariah reluctantly asked for assistance, for some way to eliminate all that was bothering her.
This time my suggestion of an affirmation was met with half-hearted agreement.
“Well…ok,” she replied. “It’s bad enough I’ll trying anything.”
I passed along the basics of an affirmation practice along with this first affirmation:
As I release my need to be perfect,
I find peace and balance in my life.
A month later, I got email from Mariah requesting a couple more affirmations.
Over time, Mariah told me, the effect of the affirmation was so subtly powerful she physically healed, found a greater measure of peace, and expanded her business.
“I realized that the affirmations pulled me out of the anxiety of my head and helped me focus on my life through the balance of my heart.”
Isabel’s Story
A friend of mine was going through a tough time at work because, as a nurse, she was witness to death and dying and the staggeringly devastating effects on friends and family. She told me she was having a tough time with two conflicting issues. One was trying to let go and not carry the emotional energy of all the people she interacted with. While at the same time, not wanting to present to her patients and their relatives as heartless or disinterested.
After using this affirmation for a week, she told me that she had been able to release her burden and her sense of uber-responsibility. “I saw myself as a river able to witness and release just as a river might do as it flows.” This is Isabel’s affirmation:
I step into the river and lay my body down.
I step into the river and let me soul go free.
I step into the river and the river is me.
My First Story
Confession: until my mid-thirties, my critical voice was the driving force in my life. As a result, I thought horribly negative thoughts about myself.
Even though I have always been highly productive, I used to feel like every action, every choice, every decision took a monumentally huge amount of energy and focus.
Fortunately, in my mid-thirties, I learned about affirmations from an off-handed remark by a friend. She shared her current affirmation which became my first.
Much of life gives the idea that there is no other choice than to run after whatever is desired or needed – usually a chase after truth and clarity, a chase after self-worth and trust.
The beauty of this affirmation is its subtle ability to flip the flow, release the chase, and step into a new life motion toward me.
Everything I need moves toward me quickly and easily.
Kathryn’s Story
Accepting self without harsh judgment is something most struggle with.
When Kathryn came into my life, she was literally stopped because she couldn’t let go of the judgment she had on herself for the awful things she had done in her past.
In her journey, she found self-acceptance began with letting go of her past. But the letting go was stuck.
Then she realized acceptance was not the same as approval or agreement.
In this realization, she found she could unfreeze and move forward.
Kathryn’s affirmation:
I accept my past as is.
Connie’s Story
Sometimes the inner struggle to feel confident and worthy creates layers of disappointment in self and pushes towards perfection and control.
Connie, despite a major lack of confidence, was a wonderful teacher.
With me, she was in search of the perfect spiritual perspective which would help her feel confident.
One of her searches: the perfect affirmation.
Connie resisted all affirmations until one day she heard her friend say to her, “Your search for perfection has you frozen.”
She asked me if I thought this possible. I turned it around and asked her what she thought of what her friend said.
“This feels like truth. Where do I begin?” she responded.
My suggestion was keep it simple so as to not immediately trigger perfection.
Sometimes the best affirmations are composed of what might appear obvious but is not aligned on a deeper level.
Connie’s first affirmation:
I am learning that I am an amazing, confident person.
My Second Story
When life is hard and nothing seems to be going right, it’s hard to remember that connection not only exists but is intrinsic to who human beings are.
We are all connected.
Connected with what is known.
Connected with what is unknown.
Connected with whatever can’t be known in this moment.
In my late thirties, the trouble in my life left me feeling completely alienated and separated from everyone and everything.
A teacher told me I was forgetting connection.
As I began to absorb this awareness, I stepped into self-judgment that I should have obviously remembered something so basic. Duh!
My teacher then suggested this affirmation.
The first couple of times I tried to say it, I became a weeping mess as the no longer needed shifted and released.
And as profound as that was, by day twenty, I had another huge release of something – I wasn’t sure exactly what – except I felt like I dumped a ton of emotional weight and turmoil.
Maybe it won’t resonate with you like it did me.
But this affirmation changed my life more than any other affirmation.
A change I still feel.
A change which deepened my clarity, intention, and integrity.
A change which loosened a whole ocean full of self-judgment.
A change for which I am extremely thankful even to this day.
I forgive myself for forgetting that I am divine.
Experience with Affirmations: a short piece I have written for a new book on Affirmations. Read more in this column: A View from the Boundlessness.
