ShareThisUsing Positive Affirmations to Improve My Attitude
Completed
Created Nov 10, 2009
| Tags
happiness, positivity, attitude
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I will create and maintain a list of positive affirmations about my life and the things that I currently tend to feel negative about. I will regularly (at least once per day) read them aloud and with conviction. |
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I will observe here periodically my feelings about the project (subjectively). I'll also ask my wife for feedback on how I seem to her (hopefully more objective). |
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I'll try for at least a month. If I don't notice positive effects by then, I'll re-evaluate based on my experience at that time. |
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At worst, I'll have a list of things to be positive about. At best, I'll be a happier more positive person, and have a better effect on those around me. |
Comments & Observations
Brock Tice I ended up writing positive-affirmation versions of my major goals. Read through them once this morning. There's a nagging voice in the back of my head sometimes saying "lies! lies!". Nonetheless I feel a little more upbeat about things. :)
Nov 11, 2009
Liza Cunningham [Liza wrote] Great experiment idea! Have you read the "Law of Attraction" by Michael Losier? He writes about the idea of positive energy, and how it brings more positive energy. Since reading it this summer I have tried to reframe my thinking more positively as you are doing, and its been very effective. Specifically with affirmations he says we have to believe them (your point about the voice in your head saying "lies' ;-)
To remove that voice he suggests starting the affirmation with "I am in the process of..." or "Working toward..." which are statements that allow everything to feel more true. Hope that helps, look forward to hearing more.
Nov 11, 2009
Brock Tice Liza, I've avoided the "Law of Attraction", Secret, etc, since it's full of pseudoscience. That's not to say that the idea of having a positive outlook is nonsense, but the idea that it magically attracts good things to you is.
Nonetheless, the point of tweaking the affirmation is well taken. Like Buddhism, I view this as a sort of "mind-hacking" technique, and that seems like an insightful "hack".
Nov 11, 2009
Brock Tice From a LinkedIn discussion on a totally different topic:
"Himmler said that if you repeat a lie consistently for many times after sometimes you sincerely take it as true. It is proven by psychologists that Himmler was right and they use it as a reliable reverse psychology when required."
I wonder if it works on oneself?
Nov 11, 2009
Liza Cunningham Hey Brock, definitely the law of attraction has pseudo-science angle. I looked past that part (too new-agey for me without enough data) and instead focused on the power of changing one's perspective (your mind-hack example). Also, trying to rid the "negative self-talk".
Nov 11, 2009
Brock Tice I'm already feeling the cognitive dissonance when I go through the affirmations, "hey, if I'm like this, I should go do that!"
Cool!
Nov 11, 2009
Matthew Cornell I'm with you, Brock. Resistance is data.
Nov 16, 2009
Matthew Cornell Resistance is Data - http://matthewcornell.org/2009/11/resistance-data.html
Nov 16, 2009
Brock Tice This continues to work well. Had the best week I've had in a long time last week. Better interactions with my wife and daughter, and I was happier in general.
I'm finding that the affirmations give me 'ammunition' against my negative thoughts and self-talk. Whenever that grumbly voice pipes up, I think, "No, I'm ... " (appropriate affirmation).
Excellent.
WRT resistance: I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to here, but there's a point when there's something that you don't like, but the alternatives are either worse than the status quo or simply not available. Once those types of problems are identified, it's time to start letting them go. This is working well in that situation.
Nov 16, 2009
Matthew Cornell [mc says] Really interesting results, Brock. I think I need to revisit the exercises. I had followed some of them from the book Liza mentioned, without big results. (And yes, I agree re: the pseudoscience of it. I had to work a bit to let go of my skepticism and take what I could use.)
WRT resistance: I was referring to your comment re feeling cognitive dissonance.
Good work, Brock!
Nov 17, 2009
Brock Tice Hey, I got a nudge. Neat! OK, I'm still getting back on track after a crazy month or so (was it really a month?) and I have yet to return to my Edison projects. I'm actually running another experiment and haven't posted it here yet. I'm hoping to get back to it by next week.
Dec 10, 2009
Brock Tice Haven't been doing this consistently, and it shows. I've been having trouble dealing with Amanda's work schedule over the holidays.
Dec 28, 2009
Shrey Chakravorty Cool experiment!
Try out NLP...
Jan 07, 2010
Shrey Chakravorty Have you read "The Monk Who sold his Ferrari" by Robin Sharma? Do read the book if you havent, will help a lot... :)
Jan 07, 2010
Matthew Cornell Good experiment, Brock. Re pseudoscience, I feel the same way. In my case I read the book after hearing Liza's thoughts on it, and the perspective on affirmations explained why they didn't work for me in the past. "I can easily understand Computability Theory" wasn't super effective ;-) That said, this type of thing didn't stick this time around, so I'm curious to read about your results. The exercise certainly can't hurt, as you point out!
"if you repeat a lie consistently..." - I love the positive spin. Visualizations work this way, right? I've been coming at this from the denial angle; is there a healthy way to use it?
Thanks Shrey for the NLP and Sharma pointers. I have an NLP book on tape with me during some travel, and I'm looking forward to listening to it. I admit to having trouble with narrative styles like Sharma's. They seem self-indulgent and a cheap way out of the hard work of distilling ideas. Woh - that's a bias, which means I need to give it a shot ;-)
So Brock: Will you continue?
Jan 10, 2010
Brock Tice Shrey: I have not read it, but it looks interesting. Some of the reviews seem to indicate that the prose is kind of bad. Did you find that to be the case?
Jan 11, 2010
Brock Tice I added this affirmation thing to the wiki template for my daily planning. It's got me doing it more consistently. I've noticed that the affirmations don't seem to be as effective as they were initially. Part of that is because I've definitely come more in line with the things I'm affirming (success!), but I suspect part of it may be that it's becoming 'furniture' in my mind -- I know it's there but I don't pay attention unless it moves. Is there a better word for that?
Jan 11, 2010
Brock Tice I should also note that I'm not reading through the Five (Buddhist) Precepts every morning, to help me keep in mind those guidelines. I used to just do it when I sat down to meditate, but this way I get the benefit even if I'm not on track with my sitting.
Jan 12, 2010
Matthew Cornell "The Five Precepts are commitments to abstain from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and intoxication." Very reasonable, IMHO.
Re: Not paying attention unless it moves, "survival".
Jan 17, 2010
Brock Tice I'm NOW reading through the precepts, not "not" reading through them. Whoops. You seem to have got my meaning anyway, but I was confused when I read it myself!
Jan 18, 2010
Brock Tice I'm going to call this a success. I'm doing it every day and it seems to have improved things.
Feb 04, 2010
Matthew Cornell A big congrats!
Feb 07, 2010