If you’re a former big spender with the huge personal development company, Nightingale Conant, as I am, then you must have have come across the subject of affirmations, and most likely used them in some way shape or form.
I do teach affirmations, and the correct way to use them, but only after explaining a few home truths to the client, which appear to be missing from everyone’s else’s training courses.
2009 saw the first ‘evidence’ from the University of Wallington in Canada, that affirmations not only didn’t work for the majority of people but that they actually made things worse.
How come, haven’t people been using positive self-statements for forever?
Well, two people can react very differently to peanuts, can’t they?
One person’s immune system sees them as a threat and attacks them, and the others as a friend, and takes nutrition from them.
You can see the danger in blindly guessing which persons which there, can’t you?
And it may be that affirmations might be as much of a lottery.
If you have no fucking clue what you’re doing that is!
Affirmations are read, written, sung, or listened to by millions of people the world over, and of course, all that would take place, as the clever psychologists love to remind us, in the conscious, rational mind.
This is why most psychologists will tell you they don’t work. It’s because the real tool for personal change lies in the subconscious, and on that much, we agree.
Let’s say you do affirmations for an hour a day for example.
And let’s say one of them is to do with you enjoying optimum health.
But in fact, your current health in the here and now, fucking sucks!
You most likely have a subconscious programme running 24/7 saying you’re a fat, lazy, unhealthy fucker, and you’re hoping to override that with an hours’ worth of writing out, speaking or listening, to the following affirmation;
‘I enjoy excellent health and high energy’
Mm, let me think, who’s gonna win that scrap?
A 24/7 programme of ‘I’m a fat lazy slob, who eats like shit, and is always at the doctors’ or an hour of ‘I enjoy excellent health’ with Tony Robbins?
I know. When I put it like that, it becomes a no-brainer doesn’t it?
And the irony was that your Life or Sales coach, probably an ‘NLP Terry’ (wanker), taught you those affirmations, in the hope that somehow you can re programme those self-limiting beliefs.
So please forgive him for selling you false hope.
Try this; Try shitting in one hand and hoping in the other, and see which hand fills up the quickest!
I don’t sell hope to the hopeless, and now your beginning to understand why.
So if I had a client who was obviously a slob, and that’s just fine by the way, because he may be a ten times better dad than you, or a far better provider than me, but he just happens to have issues with weight and health, then I wouldn’t suggest an affirmation that’s obviously 180 degrees in opposition to the truth.
Think of this guy’s subconscious attacking the affirmation with the same effort the immune system attacks someone with a full on peanut allergy, and boom, there’s going to be some unpleasant feedback.
However, it would be good to go through life not being paranoid about nuts, wouldn’t it?
So a little desensitization here and there may lead to a person’s immune system to one day see peanuts for what they really are.
A bit like the basis of immunising someone with just enough of a pathogen, to alert the immune system to make antibodies.
So with our slobby person, whose unconscious mind knows him for what he truly believes he is, we won’t slip by that security guard with anything to obvious.
For this guy, if I had to recommend an affirmation, I might go for something like;
‘every day I’m improving my health and energy’.
Now providing he actually does do something positive towards better health each day, the subconscious, in my experience, will let it slip by as if to say ‘ok, you’re a fat fucker, but let’s see what you’re made of’
His subconscious knows exactly how many slices of bread, he eats with each meal, that he always takes the elevator for 2 floors at work, and that on the rare occasions he visits the health club, he parks in the handicap space by the front door.
How does it know this?
Because it’s the fucking boss that’s sending his conscious mind those thoughts to behave that way in the first place, to keep him in line with his inner core beliefs.
No rational, logical person needs to eat 6 slices of bread with a meal, or suffer the embarrassment of his gym manager asking him to move his car.
And if fatty tries to override his urges using ‘willpower’ alone, the subconscious will just signal the hunger hormone Ghrelin, to increase his appetite, and make sure his satiety hormone, Leptin, stays unsatisfied, till he’s finished the 6th slice.
It’ll also send messages/inner voices that say; ‘no handicapped people use the gym’ and; ‘I’ve never seen anyone with a sticker parked there’ or how about; ‘lots of people park there, so fuck the rules’.
If willpower does prevail, it won’t be for long, nor repeated too often, because the subconscious will just make him feel like shit, miserable and deprived. Like he’s doing something that’s just not in his nature.
He’ll start thinking; ‘yeah right, why the fuck do I care what other people think of me? I’d rather be fat and happy than thin and sad. Plus my granddad was heavier than me, and he lived to be 125!’
This, by the way, is exactly what’s going on in 99.9% of obese people you meet, who ‘claim’ to be fat and happy, or proud even.
Some are so convincing, that you often end up wondering why the fuck you bother to stay in shape yourself! Am I right?
I feel sorry for anyone wearing a ‘Fat and Happy’ T-shirt, since being more than 30 lbs overweight has been linked to just about every major killer disease you can mention. The T-shirts should be re-named ‘Fat, and Happily Retarded!’
4, 5, 6 or more stone overweight and still happy?
Fuck off darling, your conscious mind, maybe, but your crying on the inside.
The subconscious is just too darn clever for most people.
To try out foxing it by using only the conscious mind as a weapon, it’s akin to fighting Mike Tyson with a teddy bear!
Why are Psychologists so down on Life Coaches in the first place?
What I’m about to share with you will fly in the face of the 2009 Canadian study, which psychologists the world over delighted in, of course, as the chance to ‘shove it’ to the global self-help community would have been irresistible for them.
The academic mental health community, views the self-help/personal development/ life coaching community, in kind of the same way the medical profession looks down their noses at homeopathy, acupuncture, or any kind of energy medicine.
In other words, if it doesn’t match up to their mechanistic ideas, which usually involves managing a bunch of symptoms with pharmaceutical drugs and talk therapy, then it’s quackery.
The psychologist will also have you on drugs quicker than a rabbit gets fucked, but in the rare event they don’t, then their version of a pill to manage your problems, comes in the form of ‘coping strategies’.
If you ever hear anyone suggesting their ‘therapist’ has been a great help to them, then what you’re hearing is usually a person who has simply learned to ‘cope’ with their problems.
If you had a banging headache, for example, a doctor will give you a drug which blocks the pain signals, and do nothing whatsoever for the root cause of the pain, so the best you can hope for is to cope with the pain till it goes away.
And it will come back, of course, since neither you nor your doctor did fuck all to address the cause.
Suppose you were on a desert island for a month, and had the same headache 3 times a week, but with no access to your doctor. You’d need to find coping strategies, wouldn’t you? And after the 12 headaches were over, you might have discovered many things that make life easier till a headache passes.
In the process of developing these coping methods, you may even inadvertently solve the problem that was causing the pain in the first place. Maybe staying fully hydrated with coconut milk was the answer.
Millions of people worldwide are ‘in therapy’ of some kind or other, often for years or decades, for issues that many decent life coaches could, or should be able to handle in a few hours, and only then because it takes a few hours to get the clients understanding of how the mind works, to the point where they’ll have enough faith in the methods to be used, before providing the solution.
That’s my own personal method, and I hope, a good reason why I have to expose the conventional, psychological route to mental balance, as complete bullshit at the outset.
My client may already have been down the therapy route for years or decades and doesn’t need convincing that it didn’t work. It’s fucking obvious it hasn’t worked, or why else would he be asking me for relief from the same burden!
Even with that guy (or Girl), chances are they’ve been brought up to be respectful, and look up to academics, doctors and the like, plus they don’t want to feel as if they’ve wasted a ton of time and money chasing their tail.
This kind of client prefers to blame the failure to change on themselves because, somehow, being weak-willed or unworthy, they couldn’t extract and make use of the genius behind the psychology couch.
It’s never the client that’s failed, and I have to nail that point home, else the client will soon begin to doubt his worthiness to take on my methods.
The only way this can be done, and I do wish there was another way, is to trash and expose the psych professions in articles like this, reveal their history, explain the DSM, and highlight the profession to be first and foremost, a business driven for profit and ego.
That’s the same for me, of course, I like being wealthy, and recognised for my talent.
But what I don’t do, is hide behind a degree that gives the distinct impression that the money only comes as a side effect from my desire to help mankind first, foremost, and above all else, and the words ‘the sooner I can help you the better’, coming from a therapist’s lips are common.
No financially motivated business wants to get rid of its clients in a hurry, and hence the common story of people in therapy for decades.
You’d think that, after throwing an hour and a hundred dollars a week down the drain, that after 10 years in therapy the penny would drop for most people, but no, and for 2 very good reasons.
First off, no patient wants to feel like they’ve been robbed or had their time wasted, and so the further they become ‘invested’ in time, money, and secrets shared with the therapist, the least likely it’ll be they’ll want to pull out.
Everyone else will tell them they’re wasting their time, but they’ll convince themselves they still need help, and believe the therapist’s intentions are sound.
Why give up after coming this far? And starting from scratch with a new program or therapist will offer no more guarantee of success than digging in with the current one will.
Secondly, the psychologist will often as not make the problem about you, and, or, make you a victim of circumstances. In other word’s there’s a problem with you, but it won’t be your fault.
Think about that for a moment.
Or try this as an example. Psychologists know jack shit about physiology, diet, and nutrition, yes?
So if a morbidly obese person, wanders into their clutches, then the only reason this person is 10 stone overweight, is down to Gluttony and Sloth, which is a character defect, yes?
They simply have an ‘Eating Disorder’ and have failed numerous times to consume less energy than they burn off. Ok.
Don’t let your emotions make you their bitch!
And the reason the ideal weight has never been achieved to date is because the client feels unworthy, unlovable, ugly, unimportant, misunderstood, pressured, tired, oppressed and hopeless.
Although that’s already perfectly enough issues for the therapist to make a good living out of, along with helping them to resist the temptation of crap food on every street corner, teaching them how to ignore images from the media, and to learn to cope with all the cruel comments and health issues, then this poor fucker could be a good financial earner for decades.
So this poor obese person, in a psychologists’ eyes, has a clinical mental disorder, a character flaw (gluttony, sloth and no willpower), and is a victim of society (their upbringing, the media and McDonalds)!
These are people who will end up with gastric bands, as well as on anti-depressants and unnecessary thyroid meds.
Do you see how they can make such a huge amount of issues and therapy opportunities, out of a dude who’s just a bit down on himself, and needs to lose weight?
If you’re a person who eats 6 pizzas a day, washed down with 2 litres of regular Coke and a tub of Hagen Daz, then instead of asking ‘why do I do this to myself’, or how it might be down to the way someone spoke to you when you were 7, perhaps you need to start to ask better questions.
Why the fuck is my hunger hormone switched on 24/7, why is my satiety hormone not kicking in, and practically dormant, and where the hell are these cravings for carbohydrates coming from?
Is it something to do with the type of foods I’m eating, or could there be addictive additives inside them that I’m unaware of, and is that fuelling my problem?
You be the doctor for a moment.
If I had two 18-year-old twin boys, and one was a skinny 4 ft. tall runt that was shrinking, while the other was a 7-foot giant and still growing, you wouldn’t tell me my problem was that the skinny kid needs to eat more and exercise less, and the giant kid should eat less and exercise more!
Would you?
That would be fucking retarded.
You’d tell me to go get their hormones checked!
But a psychologist can’t advise on something he knows fuck all about, so if the problems not in your head, then you’re out of luck fatty.
But you will be in therapy for the next 25 years until you learn to love yourself, or run out of money!
However, is understanding how things work, always necessary to helping someone?
No, not always, and here are some examples.
A woman believes in Jesus and has been a bible basher since she was 5. She visits a priest she’s known and trusted since childhood, who places his hands on her head and tells her the power of Christ is entering her body to heal her headache.
Does she need to know the fuck how?
A man with a problem goes to his tribal leader, who suggests they mount an expedition through the jungle in search of the shaman’s grandfather, the oldest, wisest witch doctor in Africa. After considerable effort to find the shaman, a ceremony is performed to release the demons possessing the man’s body.
Does he ask ‘how’d that work then dude’? Does he need to?
Likewise, with the hermit that’s lived deep in the forest all her life, and has the most wonderful understanding of all the plants, herbs, fungi and tree barks, and all their medicinal applications, passed onto her by her mother, and her mother’s mother, and so on right back to the original mother earth.
So you get my drift.
Now imagine this, and this one’s going to seem crazy I know, but there are actually people who think that by spending a few years in an institution that’s run for profit, and learning a syllabus that’s written and structured by a profit-making chemical industry, and by obtaining a degree in this completely made up science, they are now able to be of some assistance to humanity!
And their called Psychologists.
Worse still, is that there are billions of people who also believe this bullshit, resulting in charismatic therapists having long waiting lists for clients.
I’m well aware of what my ‘lack of qualifications’ may mean to a client, just as I’m well aware of how I look and sound.
With no dog collar, ancient reputation, or diploma on my wall, I know exactly what I’m up against.
I’m the poor fucker that gets consulted ‘after’ the medication and years of bullshit therapies have crashed and burned, and after thousands of dollars have been spent elsewhere.
Only I’m often the first one the client actually has to pay for from his disposable income since all the insurance companies in the world are happy to pick up the tab for any mickey mouse treatment that involves drugs, a couch, and a PhD.
So you better believe I need to do some explaining before I get to the fixing part, which may only take a few hours.
Now, I’m pretty open about my opinions on most life coaches and self-help groups out there, and as to any of them being any less money orientated than their academic opposites, well your guess is as good as mine, but if almost 40 years in this field has taught me anything it’s this;
If you had a massive set of scales that were dead evenly balanced, and on one side you put all ‘the good’ that the psychiatry and psychology profession has done in the world since day one, the fucking scales wouldn’t budge one inch.
Oh, you thought I was going to compare that shit with the self-help movement on the other side of the scales, or what I do, didn’t you?
Let me tell you that if you added the pharmaceutical industry, medical doctors and so on to the psychology bowl, it might begin to move slightly, due to the only thing they’ve ever managed to cure in the history of medicine, that being with the invention of antibiotics.
If you wanted to get that bowl of the scales to touch down, you’d have to include trauma doctors in the mix, because they are, by and large, excellent.
And still, you have fuck all in the opposite bowl!
Now you pick any one god damned thing from the natural world and add it to that empty bowl, let’s say acupuncture, and that bowl will come crashing down, sending the other one skywards.
You take your pick from chiropractic, homeopathic, holistic, herbalism, you name it, and dare I say it, even religion and the power of prayer, for those who believe, would outweigh the almost non-existent good in the ‘modern’, ‘academic’, and ‘mainstream’ bowl.
So as much as I may disagree with most of my own life coaching industry, and for most of the time, I would have to say from sheer obvious observation, that they have done more for the spiritual, mental and physical wellbeing of mankind, than the flip side of the coin ever has.
All that, in-spite of the brilliantly orchestrated and successful smear campaigns waged upon them for almost a century, by the filthy rich, medical and psychological institutions.
So if a few guru’s got it wrong with affirmations, what’s the big fucking deal?
Haven’t we all now discovered that ‘Talk Therapy’ turned out to be more harm than good?
Or that anti-depressants work no better than sugar pills?
Why is no one acknowledging all the scientific proof out there, that I bring to your attention on this site?
Would you be surprised to learn that the biggest revenue stream for any medical or psychological journal, is pharmaceutical advertising?
What about T.V, the press, and radio, don’t they run adverts for pharmaceuticals?
You think their free fucking ads, or what?
The media’s bought and paid for my friend, and those that would rather not be, are in too deep to change tack this late in the race.
Can you imagine a health magazine’s editor giving any kind of a green light for an expose on the pharmaceutical industry, or medical incompetence when the magazine is littered with big pharma sponsored ads that pay the wages?
If you can, then you have a pretty vivid imagination and not much of a grasp on big business and reality.
Elsewhere at Blunt Coach, we have a large article on The Placebo Effect for example, and if I worked for a pharmaceutical company and happened to read it, then I’d quit just as soon as I could find myself a stop-gap job.
The information is that embarrassing and damaging for big pharma, but no one lives off the backs of placebo more than psychologists.
Yet stop a million people on the streets and doubtless, they’ll be clueless, because unknown to them, what their watching, reading and listening to, is being very tightly controlled. This is the placebo of control and freedom of speech and information.
And I can understand how, to people under this level of manipulation, people like myself must seem off with the fairies!
If ever we do get freedom from this invisible prison, it’ll come down to better education, and true freedom of information.
I know ‘freedom of information’ is a real thing because I use it every day.
But to the average guy in the street, it may as well not exist, since he doesn’t even know he needs to find it, let alone where to find it, and then how to interpret it.
So it’s education first and foremost, except the big boys have got the education system all buttoned up too, so it falls to people like us to do the educating.
Other coaches, just like myself, totally understand how someone reading this might be thinking; ‘well if any of this were true, surely you’d find it somewhere in a University of all places’, and we get that.
As soon as you start seeing Universities and the institutions that run them as big business’s instead of vehicles for the greater good, then you’ll get it too.
Medical, dental, psychological, veterinarian, science, media, religion, and on and on to infinity, all big business. And the bottom line of any business is seldom if ever, for the greater good, peace on earth, and food for every child’s belly.
It’s supply and demand, and dog eats dog, with the keyword being ‘profit’ and not ‘love’.
Most psychologists, given a year or two to wipe the shit of university out their eyes, become acutely aware that mental health, all health, in fact, is declining, not improving, they would have to be deaf dumb and blind not to observe this, which is ironically exactly what most of them are.
By the time the average psychologist could even smell the coffee, they’re already working for themselves or a corporation. They’ve already invested 5 or 10 years, tens of thousands of dollars, run up student or business start-up debts, have families, and mortgages.
No one is more susceptible to suffering information bias’s or being blinded to the strikingly obvious, than these academic people.
When you start to include the ego in all this, and potentially losing face for having been ‘taken’ themselves, then they simply drown everything out, no matter where the evidence comes from.
Next, they join a little gang, or even a big one, who all have a common purpose of destroying anything that threatens their status quo.
Sorry, but that’s human nature, and with my back to the wall I’d do it, and I hope your smart enough to know you would too.
The trick is to never let your opponent get your back to the wall, so you have fuck all invested in being wrong.
This is why I’m going after the younger people as preferred clients, because first off they’re the ones that’ll be running things in 40 years, and they’re the ones least invested in the bullshit thus far.
But you have to catch them early.
Depending on what their studying, the first year at a university could fuck that up completely!
Be an engineer or an architect I tell them, study physics or math, play some amazing music or study rocks. But if you think you’ll get to the truth of history, psychology, medicine, or the media, for example, forget it.
So let’s get back to affirmations, and what I call ‘Placebo Affirmations’
Placebo affirmations offer a temporary fix if you like, for anyone who, in reality, is the polar opposite to that which the affirmation is aimed at becoming, having or doing.
‘I’m thin and energetic’ for example, for a guy who’s currently ‘obese and sedentary’
To make matters worse, this guy may hang out with other people just like himself (like attracts like remember), and work for Crispy Kreme, with its no doubt associated benefits!
There would be so much ‘cognitive dissonance’ (mental conflict) going on in this guy’s head if he started chanting ‘I’m thin and energetic’ for an hour a day, that two interesting things often happen.
Firstly, ‘what you resist about you persists about you’ is often cited by self-help experts. It’s thought that paying so much attention to a problem gives it its power, and increases its grip on you.
This is kind of true if you got the affirmations totally wrong, but not the full explanation.
For example, if our fat, lazy friend was to say ‘I’m not fat and lazy’ or ‘I won’t be fat and lazy today’ a thousand times a day, then clearly the focus of those affirmations are still on being fat and lazy.
As amazing as the subconscious mind may well be, it simply has no idea whether being fat and lazy is good or bad for you, in fact, we are mammals remember, and each night we go into a mini-hibernation, plus there are good arguments for our ancestors needing to go without food for very long periods.
Because of this, we are designed to lay down body fat as conserves of energy, and even an average person has the calorific equivalent of two hundred snickers bars, strapped to their arses for a rainy day (body fat).
This, and a genetic program that wants us to only expend energy on hunting, gathering, building shelters and making babies, and that compels us to conserve energy (be sedentary) at all other times.
In the above ‘bad examples’ saying ‘I’m not’ or ‘I won’t’ at the beginning just compounds the problem by invoking something called ‘negation’.
Don’t think of a black cat!
In order to know what not to think about, you had to think about it, didn’t you?
So the mind will naturally focus on the things you don’t want if you fall foul to negation.
And you get what you focus on!
And this is why more opportunities to remain fat and lazy will show up for this individual.
But an often-overlooked feature of ‘what you resist about you persists about you’ is the fact that the cognitive dissonance (disagreement) between what you’re consciously saying (affirmation), and what your subconscious mind believes you actually are, is causing you stress.
As this stress builds up over time, try to imagine it being toxic to the body.
Yes, a little stress is a good thing, and on occasion, even a huge amount of stress may bring out the best in you, or cause an adaptive response that results in an evolutionary advantage.
But constant, chronic stress will kill you over time and is the root cause of every illness. If your body isn’t at ‘ease’ it will be in a state of ‘unease’, commonly known as Disease!
Think of callouses on your hands. Useful if you work as a builder or farmer, but if you overdo it and take all the skin off your palms, you’d be fucked for several days.
This is ‘Hormesis’ in action, where a little of something bad (stress, exercise, toxins etc.) can actually be an advantage, while too much of it could kill you.
Next, you need to understand this either or, scenario.
Either your body is in a state of Fight, Freeze, and Flight, or it’s in Rest, Digest and Repair.
After a meal, for example, were you to realize you were being stalked by a predator, say a grizzly bear, your body would immediately shut down your rest, digest and repair systems, and divert all available resources to getting you out of harm’s way of the bear.
Even after you’re safe, it’ll be sometime before you can return to a resting state, which many people never achieve, because they walk right back into another stressful situation.
For sure, a good night’s sleep should unravel much of the damage done, but how many stress heads do you know, who also get 8 hours of deep, restorative sleep a night?
Besides, that’s still only 8 out of 24 hrs, and to think that you can offset running around like a headless chicken for 16 hours from sleep alone, is laughable.
To keep things as simple as possible, if you can’t repair your body faster than you break it down, something bad is going to show up.
If you’re lucky it’ll just be premature ageing, lack of energy, low libido etc., and at the other end of the spectrum it’ll be full-blown cancer or heart disease.
Ok, so you get that stress beyond a certain level is bad, regardless of its source, and this includes mental or psychological stress, from writing stupidly thought out affirmations.
The power source to sustain you through the early phase of affirmation stress will be a combination of belief and placebo, though you may decide there both the same, which is fine.
In order for results to be maintained, however, you need to maintain power. The power source, in this case, becomes ‘Truth’.
So what I’d do is change the affirmation as we go along, using the truth of any results seen so far to guide us in writing the upgraded version.
Earlier, I mentioned the power of belief and even indicated that religious belief is as good as any, something you won’t hear me say often. Belief in a manager or coach will also do!
Belief mustn’t become Delusion!
I’d often find a salesperson (usually male), with a picture of a Ferrari or Lamborghini, stuck to his computer screen, and I’d like to use this as an example of bad management and training, and coach you on how this all ties in with affirmations.
If the above guy is already driving an SL55 AMG that’s worth say £80,000, then his mind can easily accept the possibility of an upgrade to a £150,000 F430.
99 times out of a hundred, however, this was never the case.
More often than not, the guy was either a ‘Bus Wanker’ (no car) or drove a fucking 10 yr. old VW Golf.
Whilst there’s nothing wrong with ultimately wanting a Bugatti Veyron, you usually find guys who own them didn’t just go from using public transport straight to a £1 million hypercar.
True Blunt Coach Story;
One year at the Geneva motor show, Steve asked me what I thought I might like to buy, and it suddenly occurred to me that there wasn’t anything there that I ‘couldn’t afford’. I’d not been over keen on the Veyron, purely for maintenance reasons, a beautiful car indeed, but a pain in the arse to look after.
On the Bugatti stand, we saw the most gorgeous Veyron, and knowing what the car was capable of performance wise, it took our breath away. These cars always look extra amazing at motor shows anyhow, a bit like Rolex’s do in a display cabinet.
I thought fuck it, I’ll only keep it for a year for the experience, and probably sell it for as much as I paid for it, or more, because of the waiting list.
This was a rare car for the simple reason that it was actually for sale there and then, for around a million quid, on a first come first served basis.
Since I was there with my Bank Manager, on a weekday, and during working hours, there was no question I’d get the car if I wanted it.
We looked all over the car, and the salesman went through the usual bollocks of trying to qualify me by asking me what I currently owned.
An F430, Bentley GTC, Lexus ISF and a Porsche Tec Art Cayenne Turbo S, was enough to convince him I wasn’t a tyre kicker, which had already wound me up a bit.
‘Can I hear what she sounds like I asked’, and was told that wouldn’t be possible given the circumstances, which kind of made sense, and you just know anything that sexy is going to sound awesome anyhow.
We left the stand with a business card and a hotline phone number for the immediate purchase, and a pretty good idea I was about to own it when my attention was drawn to a very familiar face walking towards me.
It was Arnold Schwarzenegger!
Who’d come to see the same Veyron.
He was greeted by the salesman and started poking his head around the car as you do.
I turned to Steve and said ‘the Terminator wants our fucking car. Shall we buy it before him?’
Before Steve could answer me, the hustle and bustle of the motor show was interrupted with the amazing roar of the Veyron’s mighty 8 litre, 16-cylinder engine.
Arnold was in the driving seat revving the bollocks out of it, then walking around it while it was still running, and being revved up by the fucking salesman!
That for me was all I needed to put me off buying it. ‘Fuck em, he can have it’ I told Steve, and we went on our merry way.
A week later I bought this instead;
This is ‘The White Pearl’ of Porta Portals.
So without stepping stones, the mind would resist the idea of a Veyron, even when everyone else in the office owns one.
The Pain of the Gap
You’re driving the car you own right now, because your thoughts led you to believe you could, and so the car ultimately showed up in your reality. For you to own your Golf GTi, your mind had to agree that it was in keeping with your income, education, lifestyle, peer group, and so on.
The same thing will have to happen for a Ferrari to show up one day.
If no one in your peer group owns a Ferrari, can afford one, nor is smart enough to acquire one, then that would be a tough enough situation to face, but when your mind starts thinking being rich is all about education for example, or perhaps that people from your background don’t drive cars like that, then you’ve created another massive obstacle to overcome.
But you can overcome them, and suffering any discomfort between where you are, and where you want to be, will be well worth it.
Someone, please remind me to write an article on ‘the pain of the gap’ as I believe it’s important to anyone starting a self-improvement campaign.
You can’t buy class, can you! What a fucking bell end and this is a real guy with a real car.
I’d often ask a guy still living at home ‘what’s that going to look like parked outside your Mums?’, or ‘would you want a car worth more than the flat it’s sat outside of?’
Sometimes you need to be cruel to be kind because until he grasps the absurdity of those scenarios, he won’t recognise he needs not only stepping stones towards that particular car but a shit ton of other goals along the journey.
In fact, just like our canary yellow Ferrari owner above.
Often, I’ve discovered that pictures and screensavers of exotic cars are merely lip service to please idiot managers, who insist how important goals are, but without first understanding more than 10% of the science and psychology behind them.
Affirmations are of course usually linked to goals, so you will find this lad (usually on company time) writing his affirmations out 10 times each morning before starting work.
I’ve seen company owners, managers, and supervisors allowing this, proud even, that their staff are such goal-oriented positive thinkers.
Fucking idiots the lot of them, and the kid might as well disappear for a quick wank for all the good it’d do the company.
First off read this please;
‘I drive a Ferrari F430 in slut red with crème leather, by January 2017, and it makes me feel amazing’
It’s exactly how I’d train someone to write an affirmation. It’s positive, personal and present tense (I own), specific (model and colour), and even has a date on it. Finally, it invokes a powerful emotional state of feeling amazing, for you that word might be exchanged for awesome, outstanding, or whatever word you use to describe what I personally call ‘amazing’.
The affirmation, of course, is way shorter than the meticulously written out goal, which will go into every detail of the car itself, as well as each step of how the goal will be reached.
For example, if the person were in sales, it might boil down to 1 extra pitch/presentation a day (5 a week), resulting in 2 deals, 1 of which stands up or qualifies for finance.
So 4 extra sales a month, at whatever the average sale value is for the guy or girl.
Affirmations need to be considerably shorter because you want each one written out 5 times each morning, and then again right before bed. These are the times when your subconscious is most susceptible to suggestion.
No salesperson is going to write out the Gettysburg address twice a day, but you may find many who will allow 10 minutes before breakfast, and before bed.
Then they need to read them 3 times a day, preferably out loud, and even better, raising their voices and punching the air, especially when they get to the ‘I feel amazing’ part.
Your psychology matches your physiology, and I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing someone do that standing by their desk.
The act of writing the affirmations out on their own time forces the subconscious to attach more value to them.
Remember the stepping stones.
The VW Golf will look just fine outside his mums, won’t get scratched, and is an excellent first or second car to own. Then maybe an Audi TT, followed by a used SLK, then a 911 or a Ferrari.
Sales is the only profession I’m aware of, besides entertainment, that pays people on merit, regardless of how old, educated, posh, or how long they’ve been at the firm.
If you think of any regular trade, say a postman, a lawyer, or a doctor, for example, they most likely couldn’t double their incomes, at least not in a matter of months.
Salespeople can, and often do because the sky’s the limit.
I’ve seen people go from earning 2 grand a month to 20, then 50, and onto £100,000 a month, inside of 2 years of starting.
I mention this because it’s really the only danger of affirmations, that the psychology students are alluding to.
If you have a guy working in a post office mail sorting room, then how many people drive Ferrari’s and 911 turbo’s there?
Put that same guy into any decent sales office, and the car park will be full of them, plus one extra space for him inside of a year, if he’s got what it takes.
Can you see, that the exact same Ferrari affirmation, used by both these lads, will very likely have different psychological outcomes on the guys? One is positive, and possibly the other less so.
Let’s explore more about why the tosspot Canadian psychology affirmation study, didn’t pan out.
You can’t reach a sensible conclusion if you start from a false premise!
Firstly, if you read anything like the following in any psychology publication, blog or media outlet, then your reading total, anti-self-help, propaganda bullshit;
Self Help ‘Makes You Feel Worse’ (the fucking BBC no less, ran this headline)
Why Don’t My Positive Affirmations Work? (Psychology Today)
Positive Affirmations Are a Waste of Time!! (Social Focus by CG)
Silly Self Help Tactic (Mostly) Debunked: Positive Affirmations (Limitless Mindset.com)
‘Why positive affirmations don’t work’ (Psych Central + The Huffington Post)
Al the above and tons more like them, are referring to the same Canadian study!
Here’s the title of the actual study;
Research Article; Positive Self-Statements Power for Some, Peril for Others. Joanne V. Wood, University of Waterloo and 2 University of New Brunswick
Excuse me! Power for Some, Peril for Others?
So straight away we see a ton of incongruity between the way this study was presented to us in the media and its actual conclusions.
This is the major problem for the boneheads of this world, who believe what they read and hear. The press and media, not only report the facts rather sparingly, but they offer retards the added bonus of how to interpret them!
So in other words, all the critical thinking is done for them.
How many psychologists and psych students, after reading any of the above, over time, told dozens of other people about it?
And how far has that Chinese Whisper now travelled since 2009?
I mean if you saw it on the BBC, and then had it backed up from across the pond by the Huffington Post, then it must be Kosher right?
Let’s take a closer look at the study, through my Blunt Coach eyes.
The first thought that springs to mind, is that affirmations are meant for grown-up people, and not fucking students!
Well, that’s not fair, actually, anyone can use them, but I keep saying that I wish they wouldn’t use participants under 30 for any psychological studies. For drug trials then no problem, drug the shit out of them, but if you want to prove a psychological principle, then look for real people, with at least the basics of life’s experiences out of the way.
Otherwise, it’s called ‘Child Psychology’ isn’t it?
This may seem trivial, but the statistics for suicides, mass killings, and depression among the young academic population, is through the roof.
I believe it’s also the most common time in a person’s life, to believe they know it all, when in fact they know next to fuck all, as well as the period where they may dabble in various habit-forming substances and pastimes that often lead to habitual behaviour, which we hope won’t show up if we looked at them again 15 years down the road.
The brain doesn’t finish fully forming till around 24/25, and this alone should warn us to stay out of their heads.
The above Canadian works consisted of 3 separate studies, 2 of which involved undergraduates, and the others participants were ‘introductory psychology students’ so I’m guessing all aged 18 to 21.
So why were the negative aspects of the study amplified to the point of being misleading, while the ‘Fact’ that affirmations do work for some people, was overlooked in those headlines?
In the past 6 years, I’ve not talked to 1 psychologist/student, who remembers anything other than the negative conclusions of that study, and they all didn’t advocate affirmations.
Also, ask for the wisdom of any psychology bell end on affirmations, and you’ll hear them all joyfully state, that the reason affirmations don’t work and never have, is because they are a conscious mind event and your problem you seek to change lies elsewhere, in your subconscious.
So you’re looking for your car in your garden tool shed!
The other reason they’ll gladly share is that if the conscious mind repeats something over and over that conflicts with opposing beliefs in the subconscious, then this causes mental stress.
Now you’re trying to start your motorcycle with your car keys!
So how the fuck could any harm be caused, if the conscious affirmations can’t get through to the subconscious?
Many psychologists believe that the conscious mind is divorced from the subconscious totally, while others believe the subconscious simply ignores the conscious, and some that it gets into conflict with it.
No psychologist believes in a ‘Super Consciousness’ or ‘Collective Intelligence’, they all believe that everything about you can only be found in your head, and as a consequence, they miss the bigger picture by a country mile.
And if the two sides of the mind don’t connect, then how come in this study, it worked for half of the participants?
Stupid mugs! None of them seems to be able to even agree with each other, it’s such a chop suey sack of ideas, much of it out of date, and pinned to a mechanistic medical model that won’t budge, despite evidence to the contrary.
Clearly, we know how people look to validate strongly held beliefs, to the point of becoming blind to anything to the contrary (information bias), and this is just another reason why the media, press, and universities have a duty to report things accurately.
So, it appears in the study’s conclusion, that affirmations are cool if you have High Self Esteem, and counterproductive for those with Low Self Esteem.
So they gave a bunch of kids, two bullshit questionnaires to fill out, one to gauge mood and the other self-esteem, and I really don’t have the time here to explain why they’re both bollocks, but suffice to say, that with hormones raging, the mood and self-esteem of most 18 to 21 yr. olds is up and down like a fucking roller coaster.
But this I have to share with you because it tickles me.
This is cut from the actual study; The experimenter was blind to participants’ self-esteem. Participants in both conditions were asked to write down any thoughts and feelings they had during a 4-min period.
Participants in the self-statement condition were told, in addition, that every time they heard a sound like a doorbell, they should repeat to themselves, ‘‘I am a lovable person.’’ The cues occurred at 15-s intervals (i.e., 16 repetitions).
Wow, it just makes me want to rush to the gym, and do 16 repetitions of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s favourite biceps exercise for those huge guns!
Almost as stupid as expecting to feel ‘loveable’ with the same number of reps I suppose.
So, imagine I’m an introductory psychology student (18/21), and you offer me participation credits and a bag of Haribo (maybe throw in a balloon), to take part in your study.
I couldn’t give a fuck about affirmations, to be honest, and when the doorbell rings you can poke your fucking ‘I’m a lovable person’ up your arse because I’m not Pavlov’s dog!
And since I’ve not been asked to sing, speak or write the affirmations out, nor is there a blood test or any other scientific measure to keep tabs on me, you’ll always be none the wiser that I took the piss, will you.
Plus, you’re never getting a true picture of anyone’s mind, who knows their taking part in a psychological study of some kind.
If they took two groups of retail salespeople in a huge store, and already knew what all their average sales ratios were per day, then gave one group affirmations, made sure they were written out a minimum of 5 times a day, and monitored the subjects speaking them out loud, then we could come back in a month and see how they did compare to the other group.
That’s a real-world situation, so I wouldn’t even mind if the subjects were young (24+).
What would matter, is did they become more productive, earn more commission, did the day pass quicker for them, and do they feel better or worse than a month ago?
Or you could do the study over a longer period, say 12 months, and compare bonuses and promotions earned between the groups, how this led up to driving lessons, a new car, property, or a dream vacation.
Everything compared to the control group of course.
Did the experiment increase or decrease self-esteem, especially in females? Has anyone come off meds, quit smoking, joined the gym, or even started upgrading their lovers in the past year?
I’ve seen all the above and so much more, come from the proper understanding, tuition, and consistent application of affirmations. Though never from just 16 reps mind you, but more from the kind of effort Arnie put in to build those arms!
But you’ll never see that study coming from a university will you, though a private corporation might take it on.
As to those who feel the affirmations made things worse, well, I’ve had thousands of people doing this remember, and did it work for everyone?
Of course, it fucking didn’t.
Some people are flat out liars and won’t stick to the deal, some are lazy, some believe in prayer some don’t, some come from cultures where chanting and mantras are normal, and some come from families that think it’s all new age bullshit.
Some have been brought up to expect everything they want, when they want or demand it, as if the Universe is their own personal wishing well, and trust me, these types are not likely to be pleased when they crash and burn. It’ll be everyone else’s fault but theirs.
Well Boo fucking Hoo, when they don’t set the world alight with personal change and increased feelings of self-worth after a half-arsed, 16 rep try at something they didn’t even do properly.
It’s a popular misconception among psychologists that affirmations are aimed at people with low self-esteem, and I believe this stems from a society that’s no longer set up to keep the winners winning, but to prevent the losers from losing (and then feeling bad about it).
I was first taught affirmations in the early 1980’s by my first direct sales mentor, who made it crystal clear that these were hidden secrets designed to keep leaders leading, and winners winning.
Negative or low self-esteem types wouldn’t bother with them or put the effort in to apply them fully, and it was explained that there was nothing mandatory about them. If we felt they were worthy of our effort, and made sense, we were invited to embrace them.
The wrong type of person would intuitively shun them as if knowing they’d be of no value, or wouldn’t sit comfortably in their heads. I stuck to them like shit to a blanket, as you can imagine!
This continued to stick with me, and 30 years later I would be using a person’s attitude towards them, as well as the goals which must precede them, as a very clear sign of that person’s potential.
I can’t recall a single time I got it wrong, and admittedly I was working with mostly high flying salespeople, and not many pen pushers, but every time I’d get to coaching goals, and the subject of affirmations came up, I’d make a point of making them ‘an option my trainees might like to consider’.
I’d then carefully watch the reactions of the trainees over the coming days.
And guess what? The trainees who opened up to me about their desires, worked hard on a goal journal, and were generally optimistic and enthusiastic about going someplace they’d never been, all had no problem understanding, embracing, and executing their daily affirmations, just as I had 30 years earlier.
I never hurt anyone by forcing them to do affirmations, because they were the ones who wouldn’t open up with their dreams and desires, and resisted goals and all its derivatives like ginger step kids.
These are people who won’t set goals till after they have a spare million in the bank. Then they’ll set goals, and book test drives and attend property viewings!
Without the evidence of a goal journal, affirmations were pointless. You can’t test drive an affirmation, can you?
And it’s that process of driving the car around familiar streets, perhaps honking your horn at people you know, that gives you the incredible sense of ownership.
Remember that the subconscious has no concept of right or wrong, or of time, past or present, true or false. It just knows you’re having a whale of a time, and what its associated with.
Dopamine is literally a drug, isn’t it?
In fact, when you run low on it you develop Parkinson’s, and when you run out your dead! So you want plenty of it and often can’t wait for the next hit.
I’m sure you’ve heard the expression ‘High on Life’ before, and that’s all it is.
It’s the same in reverse if you feel awful about something that happened 20 years ago. Your mind will still release the neurochemicals to match your emotions in the here and now.
You’ll be as miserable as fuck, with a face like a slapped arse, because it’s emotions that drive the subconscious.
You might have to force yourself at first, to view the luxury apartment you have no way of affording, test drive the Ferrari, try on the Rolex, wander around hotels you’d like to stay in, visit charities you’d love to play a big part in, and so on.
But when you do this, your subconscious will sense the ‘Emotional Charge’ generated through your conscious words and actions, and this is how the two minds communicate.
The mind sends out the neurochemical cocktail for enthusiasm, passion, status, recognition, and so on, because, having no sense of time or a sense of humour, it simply picks up on the emotions that go along with (perceived) ownership or achievement, for whatever it is you want to do, be, or have.
And it obviously knows you’ll need a boost of energy for that lot, so it amps everything up a gear or three.
Suddenly your head and shoulders above your so-called competition. You’re up an hour earlier than them, and to bed an hour later, yet still have more drive, ambition, and charisma.
You learn new skills faster, remember more, and are dead keen to apply your new skills to whatever task is at hand.
And those that won’t take the test drive, attend the property viewing, try on the jewellery, watches and clothes, quiz the Kuoni travel agent, visit the private member’s gym, golf club, gentlemen’s club, Health Spa and so on, all fail!
Even those that wrote the goals down, failed without the action steps designed to elicit those powerful emotional responses.
Nothing happens in this world, good or bad, without an emotional component.
The only way you could survive a day without emotion would be in a coma.
So, since you need to ‘feel’ something to be alive, might as well be love, joy, satisfaction, pride and enthusiasm your feeling, as opposed to apathy, depression, frustration, and discouragement.
That’s the key to what the Canadian study missed.
Without being tied to a goal and an emotional charge, affirmations are almost a waste of time, hence only half their group reported feeling better after using them, and those students had already been tagged with high self-esteem.
Perhaps if I had run the experiment, I’d have had 80 – 90% at least feeling better, because I would have made it an option in the first place, and those taking me up on the option would likely be of the correct ilk to benefit.
And those that resisted, refused, or preferred not to do them wouldn’t need to be tested, would they? That would be like testing peanuts on people with a known allergy.
I will admit that a great many well-known personal development/self-help gurus, have and do give the clear impression that affirmations are great for anybody, and can be done exclusively, without the need for the hard labour of goal setting.
They do this because the bulk of their clientele are lazy retards with a spare $20 burning a hole in their pocket.
Their looking for a quick, easy, and cheap fix to all their problems, accumulated over decades, and at no doubt tremendous expense.
The low hanging fruit in other words.
Tell those same people that the process of goal setting will take them at least 20 hours, before you ever get to affirmations, and see how many buy your book or CD.
After all, to be a balanced person we don’t just need a Ferrari, do we?
We need goals in many categories, such as Health, Family, Career, Financial, Fitness, Social, Education, and Spiritual.
In each of those categories, you have to identify what you want to Do, Be and Have. For example, in your fitness goals, you may want to ‘Do’ (run) a marathon, ‘Be’ a black belt, and ‘Have’ a resting heart rate of 50.
Then you need 1, 3 and 5-year goals for everything, and on it goes.
It’s a labour of love I can tell you, and many people reading this won’t need convincing that it’s not easy to get everyone to comply, and perhaps might say ‘fuck all that, I’ll just do the affirmations and see how things go. If it goes well, then, of course, I’ll do all the goal writing’.
That’s the mentality of the vast majority of ‘Have Nots’ in this world, and it’s for them that the self-help books and courses are aimed.
Priced to sell and aimed at the lowest common denominator.
The Cream of the Crap maybe, but fuck me there are a lot of them, possibly 90% of the population think like ‘Normal’ people think, and that’s exactly why they end up with normal brains, body’s, homes, cars, incomes, and life expectancy.
3% are exceptional people, and another 7% could be, they can feel it in their bones, and they are my preferred clients.
I’m not saying I won’t take a 90 percenters money since they don’t always identify themselves as normal, it’s just that they’ve had a normal run of luck this past 25 years!
Plus, I don’t sugar coat anything, not ever.
I tell people straight; if you think that clearing up a river of shit, created over decades of ignorance and neglect is going to be a walk in the park, then fuck off and send your dough to Tony Robbins!
Goals are a Goldmine when you know how to set and execute them correctly, but also a Minefield at the same time for those who don’t understand what’s going on.
Which is just about 90% of everyone teaching and practising them!
Why are only 10% getting it right?
Because few people have access to people like me, and fewer still will go to the trouble of going ‘Bollock Deep’ into a field of study that requires a ton of effort, the adherence to a structured formula, and an above average level of patience, as well as a tolerance for when things don’t go their way.
And they often won’t.
I personally can’t say I’ve ever hit more than 50% of the goals I ever set, but by god were the ones I did hit spectacular, meaningful and profound.
Any disappointment I encountered on my journey over missed goals, was always massively outweighed by the joy of the ones I achieved.
And this is why you mustn’t have just a few goals, because if you only had 5, then there’s a chance you might bomb on all 5 and slash your wrists.
However, with 25 goals in each of the 8 categories above, spread over 1, 3 and 5 years, all expertly written out, and with their own action steps pinned to powerful emotions, and daily affirmations thrown in the bargain, how the fuck can anyone emerge from that exercise harmed in any way?
Just a 20% success rate on 200 goals would change your life forever.
I don’t know what those 40 achieved goals would mean to you over the next 5 years, but I’m guessing it would be huge for both you and those you love and care for.
But what if you hit 30, 40 or 50%, what then? Can you imagine you’d ever look back in tragedy on the goals you missed?
Because here’s one guarantee I can give you;
In life, you always Miss 100% of the Shots You Don’t Take!
And that’s both a guarantee you can take to the bank, as well as the ‘real’ risk of goals and their affirmations.
Doing fuck all in life may seem like a safe option to many people.
They survived doing fuck all yesterday, and since survival is paramount, it follows that they should want to repeat it. So they do fuck all today, and again they survive.
Pretty soon that becomes habitual, even though others around you are also surviving, but are setting goals, targets, and objectives, creating, losing and recreating.
Even a Formula 1 driver can live to a hundred! Try telling him to stay home and play it safe.
This ‘habitual mediocrity’ as I termed it, might tick all the boxes for most people.
You know, find an ugly borderline boiler to breed with, and whamo, you survived long enough to pass your genes on, which is a very good argument for having completed your most basic human goal.
Bravo Homo Sapien, you can fuck off and die now, job done, case closed.
I just feel it’s not what we’re here for, and though I’m thrilled to have survived puberty, and then hung around long enough to father two beautiful healthy children, I saw it as the start of something, rather than the pinnacle.
A Ship in the Harbour is Safe, but that’s not what Ships Are Made for!
So let’s recap and reveal a few final truths before we leave this Affirmation master class (because that’s what it is), and I hope, another kick in the bollocks to the psychology profession. And please remember they started it!
First some questions;
What does the top guy in a post office sorting room earn, compared with a high-flying salesman or entrepreneur?
And what does a fucking psychology student earn?
I appreciate that certain affirmations like health, fitness or relationship ones, are less dependent on income, but for the reasons cited earlier, they can also be counterintuitive if not used wisely.
And what should make you believe that a psychology professor knows fuck all about the pre-use process, correct wording, and optimal usage of affirmations? (which won’t be 16 reps will it)
Fuck all as I see it.
Where for example, would they have learned about ‘Placebo Affirmations’? because I invented them!
The one thing I really want you to take from all this is that affirmations are supposed to be tied to very specific goals, which in turn are tied to your innermost, white-hot desires.
Once I know what your drives and desires are, I can help you set goals aligned with those desires, and within the current boundaries of your career path.
Then, and only then, will we be able to figure and write out the specific daily affirmations you’ll use, using keywords and phrases that mean something to you (trance words etc.), and only then will they have any value.
Follow me here please; Desire is like your mains electricity supply.
Goals are the wires taking that power along the journey, down the wires to your home.
Powerful Positive Emotions are like your homes fuse breakers, they all have to be switched on before the juice can get to any appliance, even though the mains are on outside in your street.
And the Affirmations are like throwing the switch to make your computer come on.
How can the computer come on if the fuses are tripped, or there’s no power or wiring behind it?
If your computer won’t switch on, you’d check the plug first I hope, then the indoor fuse board, and then the one in the street. You’d need to be convinced that power wasn’t the issue before you decide your computers fucked and start taking it apart.
This Canadian experiment did it in reverse, and leapt to the conclusion that the appliances (students), that failed to respond to their switch (affirmation), were broken; I.e.; they had a low self-esteem.
See my article on Self-Esteem, because I’m pretty sure it’s a racket, an idea often used to the advantage of therapists and self-help gurus, who claim to want to help change it.
Surely our self-esteem isn’t fixed at either high or low but moves along a continuum depending on various moods, time, circumstances, or tasks were involved in.
We’re not bloody robots but are educated as such. This does this, and that does that, you’re either this or that and if you are like that, then when this happens you’ll either react like this or that!
I know, sounds fucking nonsense, but you and I aren’t anything or anyone, that’s always going to do something a given way, were all things, infinite possibilities all co-existing at the same time, and constantly in a state of flux.
It’s nice to predict what someone will do next, and then offer a logical, rational, mechanistic explanation as to how we were correct in our prediction.
As innocent as being right about a person’s behavioural steps might be, it’s dangerous to then rigidly pigeonhole them as this or that type, low or high esteem etc.
It’s common for people with a mechanistic view, as psychologists and doctors have, to break everything down into its component parts, then focus very intently on the component till they obtain a PhD in it.
All the while oblivious to the interconnectivity of the component, with everything else in the system that may come after, or in the above electricity example, before it.
That’s what’s happened in this Canadian study.
Beware of Experts who wax lyrical about the minutia of any massive topic!
Mirrors, for example, are important in a car; don’t you agree?
But if I gained a PhD in car mirrors, that’s everything from design, aerodynamics, through to manufacture and fitting, would I know fuck all about cars or transportation?
There’s a recipe or an order for doing most things correctly, and often the more academic people become, the less they believe these rules apply to them, or perhaps it’s a side effect of their field of vision narrowing as their career expertize or specialization develops.
Studying affirmations, divorced from their emotions, goals, and core desires, was a stupid thing to do in the first place.
Not that they even knew that, but if properly structured, the whole experiment would have become unimaginably long-winded and expensive, because the affirmation part of that equation, or recipe, is the simplest part.
Like cracking a single egg compared to baking a whole cake.
Just as the last example, and going back to the guy who wanted the F430, I’d first ask why, or in the case of the study, why do you want to become a more loveable person?
If I couldn’t get a sense of any passion, or a white-hot desire that was tied back to some purpose in life, then I might not take the lad to seriously, and obviously drop it, and look for something else he was passionate about.
Perhaps on reflection, the students would have discovered that plenty of people have, and currently do already love them, and perhaps the future will bring even more love into their experience.
Assuming my trainee was ‘on fire’ about the car, or being loved by everyone, I’d ask to see the written goal, and the 6 to 8 specific steps he’d listed to help him achieve it.
Assuming he’d done them, then the last step would be to list a plan of action, and I’d expect to see one or two things on that list already completed. For example; for lover boy, I’d want to see where he’s been dishing out more love to others than he did before he set the goal, which is where the problem truly is.
When guys or girls do car goals, the first step in the plan of action, is normally to call, or pop into the local dealership and pick up a brochure, and after chopping it up, placing pictures around his bedside, desk, refrigerator, and creating a screen saver, the next step will be to book a test drive.
As long as you have a valid license, a half decent suit and polished shoes, any Ferrari salesman worth his salt will be happy to get you out on the road, no questions asked.
You’ll interestingly find that Ferrari salesmen are often less stuck up and poncey, than their BMW counterparts down the road (I won’t go into that here).
It doesn’t matter that it’s a £150,000 car, and the guy only has 15 grand to his name right now, that’s all in his head, and the test drive is such an important component to ultimately obtaining the goal.
Lads who put off the test drive till there a little better off financially, never fucking own a Fezza.
I should know, because I’ve helped hundreds of lads set car goals for various exotic and luxury cars, and at least a dozen of those lads wanted Ferrari’s. Those that followed the recipe got them, and those that didn’t went home very disappointed.
It doesn’t matter what the goal is because that visceral, real, tangible, tactile part of the process is absolutely critical.
If they want to own a luxury penthouse, they have to go and view luxury penthouses and make sure they open and close windows, run taps and flush toilets while their there, to fool the subconscious into a sense of ownership.
I even advocate asking the property agent if you can open the front door with the key, so as you can get a sense of coming home from work. I’ve never had anyone refused that request.
Now imagine a person sidestepping all those steps, and simply writing or speaking the affirmations associated with the goal, ten, or a hundred times a day.
What chance do you think, knowing what you now know, will there ever be of a penthouse with a Ferrari parked outside, showing up in that person’s reality?
Congratulations dear reader, even with this 10% I’ve shared with you today, you now know more about the subject than a university Ph.D., and frankly most sales managers and life coaches.
Affirmations are safe, as are many things, when you have a good coach, follow the recipe, and put some bloody effort in, and unsafe if you don’t know what you’re doing.
This is why I feel it’s irresponsible to give affirmation advice in a self-help book, or even on a course, without first getting into what should precede them.
This often never happens because goals are a huge subject in and of themselves, whereas affirmations are little smart arse add-ons, that can be taught in minutes.
Also, this ‘one size fits all’ bullshit has to stop.
Authors have no clue as to who is following their lead, or what those individual’s unique circumstances are. They may be following the steps to the letter, but the desired result is instead replaced with disappointment because those steps lead somewhere inappropriate.
I’d always prefer to see the affirmations prior to their daily use, just to be sure they tick all the boxes for being tailor-made to the individual.
Your Success in life will be in Direct Proportion to your Willingness to Fail, and Keep on Trying!
Is it really dangerous to get them wrong?
I’ve honestly seen it go either way, but the negatives seem to be experienced by the older trainees, and especially the over 40’s.
If you’ve led a charmed life so far, then they won’t harm you one bit.
If you’ve had a few setbacks in life already, then you might need to be more cautious.
But if you’ve had the stuffing knocked out of you, perhaps a bankruptcy, messy divorce, riches to rags, health issues and so on, then you need someone like me to make sure you get them right.
I wish I could take the average 25-year-old into the future for a bit, to experience the troubles and strife’s he’ll have at 45 or 55.
Perhaps then he’d shut the fuck up about how unfairly the worlds treating him at present, and see his current issues for what they really are; Laughable Chicken Shit!
All you 16 to 30-year-olds reading this need to understand, that 30 years from now you’ll have twice the responsibilities and twice the problems you have right now, only with half the fucking energy and time to deal with them.
So best you get your shit together now, while you’re in your prime and still pumping those hormones.
So, the dangers of trying to sort your shit out with bad advice, or going completely DIY, really depend on how near you are to your tipping point already!
If you’ve been kicked in the bollocks so many times, and then hung out to dry, then just one more failure, even a seemingly minor one, could be the moment you hit the bottle, the unofficial pharmacy, or even your cars tailpipe!
Everyone has a limit before they fold up their tents and go home.
Mines off the chart, but I’ve met men and women who’ve had breakdowns over things that wouldn’t get me out of bed in the morning.
Another reason for ‘knowing your client’ I guess and the primary reason all the generic life coaching material out there is bogus.
Yes, were all very much alike in a great many ways, and were it not for this fact, then life coaches like myself would never be able to relate, or empathise with people well enough to do our jobs properly.
But we’re also a good deal different from each other at the same time.
The real problem as I’ve experienced it, is that our circumstances can be so radically different from one another, that the whole person can look good on paper as it were, but then fall apart at the seams in a complex mess, as soon as you add in circumstances, relationships, beliefs, and careers to the mix.
You can’t reach a sensible conclusion when you start from a false premise!
I’m repeating myself I know, but it’s to illustrate how important understanding key principles and concepts are, before rushing into trying or applying all the neat tricks and tips of personal development, such as affirmations.
So, yah boo sucks to the psychologists, and I for one will keep coaching and encouraging the use of affirmations.
Thanks for dropping by today,
Blunt Coach Andy.
