Affirmations have a little bit of controversy around them. Do they work? Do they not work? And how would you even begin to use them effectively to change your money mindset? Well, welcome to episode 37 of the money mindset shift! In this episode you will learn how to use affirmations, to support your shifts!

Let’s get this out of the way – affirmations do work. You can find articles such as studies at the National Library of Medicine, like this one titled: Self-affirmation activates brain systems associated with self-related processing and reward and is reinforced by future orientation (link: NCBI – WWW Error Blocked Diagnostic). And on the Carnegie Mellon University website under the Benefits of Self-Affirmation (link: Benefits of Self-Affirmation – Carnegie Mellon University | CMU)

Now that we’ve established that affirmations do, indeed work. They don’t work in all ways.

They don’t work when you deny your reality. If shit is hard and difficult, if you are behind on bills, saying “I’m fully supported by money” may feel inauthentic. We don’t gaslight ourselves, and we don’t shove down our feelings.

And if you need to hear it from someone else, Dr. Alexander pretty much says the same thing in this article on the Cleveland Clinic website, Do Positive Affirmations Work? (link: Do Positive Affirmations Work? What Experts Say) All the links are in the show notes so you can click through and read any of the articles or studies, as well as read this one on the Cleveland Clinic website, or have your software read it to you.

Sometimes affirmations don’t work, also because there is no action paired with the affirmation. Words and intentions are very magical, don’t get me wrong. But the brain also needs behavior to reinforce the shift in your thinking.

Which brings us to how to use affirmations – 4 methods that I pair with my own use of affirmations to aid in rewiring my brain, and getting those new thought patterns and beliefs to stick so my experience of money, or anything else, changes as well!

They are:

• Build the evidence
• Meditate on it
• Tapping
• Journal on it

Let’s talk about building the evidence.

Your brain does a really good job at this, but usually it is for the opposite thing. So instead of “Everything is working out in my favor,” which is one of my frequently used affirmations for shifting my brain to see possibility (link: Everything is always working out in my favor – Using and applying this affirmation. ), instead of that, your brain is finding evidence of all the times that things didn’t work out as intended or desired and how things will never work out and you’ll always be unhappy or never where you actually want to be.

Thanks brain.

Funny enough, in the Cleveland Clinic article they touch on building the evidence a bit.

So let me read you this section from the article:

“You have to give yourself the chance to have interactions that prove your negative thinking wrong,” Dr. Alexander says. “When you end up seeing that what you assumed would happen didn’t bear out, that helps reinforce your new style of thinking.”

So again, collecting the evidence. Finding the evidence is what that’s all about. Taking the action and finding it.

Finding the evidence paired with the affirmation is only going to make that connection stronger.

The next method is meditation.

You are going to have feelings come up along with those other, contrary thoughts. By meditating on the affirmation you are currently using gives you space to move through and honor those feelings.

Remember what we spoke about earlier? Shoving down your feelings, denying them, or trying to pretend they aren’t there isn’t going to help you. In fact, it does the opposite. And trust me, as someone who has developed great skill in this, they find ways to squish out. When they do, it oftentimes isn’t neat. It is messy and it can hurt not just yourself, but those around you as well.

So give yourself a committed and mindful space by using meditation to feel those feelings that come up in relation to your affirmations.

The third method I mentioned is Tapping, also known as Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT for short.

If you aren’t familiar with Tapping, typically the practitioner (i.e. you) taps on different points of their body that correspond with different meridians in Traditional Chinese Medicine. While tapping, a phrase or multiple phrases are repeated.

There are many different ways to practice tapping and adjustments that can be made based on your range of mobility and sensitivity in the various areas.

So there’s no one concrete way to do this.

In many studies, as highlighted by this one titled Clinical EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) Improves Multiple Physiological Markers of Health (link: NCBI – WWW Error Blocked Diagnostic), and this study also cites a bunch of other meta-analyses and studies as well, that show that tapping results in changes in psychological and somatic (bodily) systems.

By pairing tapping with your affirmation use, you are further moving through the emotions and aiding in retraining your body’s response.

Lastly, I use journaling with affirmations. And as you may be able to tell from other podcast episodes, social media, the limitless journal – I LOVE journaling.

I use it as a reflective and explorative tool for my thoughts, beliefs, and emotions. It is sort of like an external processor for the brain if you will.

When you get the thoughts, beliefs, etc. that come up in opposition to, or even alongside the affirmation you are working with, it creates distance between that thing and you. When you write it in your journal, it helps to create that distance. This distance can help your brain bring down its guard a bit. Instead of it being immediately defensive, you may be able to explore where the thoughts and beliefs came from, or what the emotions are attached to.

Journaling thus, lets you get that much deeper but also can be tool for some of the other previous methods that we mentioned, like a space to collect the evidence for example.

And I think that is probably why it is my favorite method out of all of them, because it is versatile.

With that, you now have 4 methods for how to use affirmations – but where do you even start with picking one and working with it?

Well, I have a whole pdf booklet with over 100 affirmations and reminders for you to use! AND IT IS FREE!! Woohoo!

But wait! There is more!! When you sign up for the FREE Affirmations and Reminder for Boss B’s – you’ll get emails that go into each method in more depth! Helping you to apply them!

Because we mostly just went over the benefits of them, and in general the methods you can apply. These will give you a little bit more details and direction on applying them. There is even a tapping video to follow along with!

Get the free pdf booklet here: https://shelbymelissa.com/affirmations-and-reminders-booklet/

Why not! It’s free!

And keep following along with the podcast for continued money mindset shifts!