Affirm Your Intentions - Achieve Your Goals

Affirmations are emotionally driven statements of intention and faith that guide thought and action. Affirmation comes from the Latin firmus, meaning strong. Affirmations recognize and assert the existence of personal truths. These statements can be powerfully effective for developing and strengthening thought patterns, and thus actions, needed to achieve goals. These thought patterns also attract the situations we affirm to be true.

Use Affirmations Effectively

Affirmations are effective when combined with strong emotions and vivid sensory imagery: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Effective affirmations state, in present tense, what we want. At the same time, we are feeling the joy, satisfaction, and gratitude we would feel if each statement had already manifested.

Recall Vivid Imagery and Strong Emotion

An effective way to create mind imagery and emotion is to recall a situation in your life when you actually felt the emotion you want to create. Recall situations that made you feel joyful, loving, forgiving, excited, happy, accepting, successful, and grateful.

This is the same way emotions surface when we dwell on memories that bring tears, upset, or nostalgic feelings. When using affirmations, you get to select purposely the emotions you want. Let these emotions surface and permeate your mind and body.

Practice Positive Affirmations

Belief, imagery, and emotion are essential elements in effective affirmations. With practice, you will be able to create vivid images and emotions very quickly. It might also be helpful to begin by affirming the action you are now taking, as in the exercise below.

Here are seventeen sample affirmations for strengthening goal achievement, creativity, confidence and abundance. Practice the affirmations while combining them with compelling imagery and strong emotion.

Affirm Only Your Intentions

Each day, our minds fill unconsciously with self-talk, echoing thought patterns and beliefs formed during early development. These might be positive and supportive thoughts. However, our internal speech can also attract the very situations and feelings we would rather avoid.

Negative, distracting thoughts are actually affirmations working against us. By becoming aware of these negative affirmations, we can replace them immediately with positive affirmations that focus on what we want.

Create Your Personal Affirmations

After practicing with the affirmations above, create your own affirmations based on what you want to achieve. It will not help to simply repeat a list of someone else's affirmations that you don't actually believe. You must own each affirmation as a personal declaration of your intention and faith.

Act on Your Affirmations

Spend time each day with your personal affirmations. Then take actions that will lead to their realization. When charged with belief, vivid imagery, and strong emotion, affirmations can be effective and supportive tools that help you move toward the achievements that you desire.

© Copyright 2005 by Steve Brunkhorst. Steve is a professional life success coach, motivational author, and the editor of Achieve! 60-Second Nuggets of Inspiration, a popular mini-zine bringing great stories, motivational nuggets, and inspiring thoughts to help you achieve more in your career and personal life. Get the next issue by visiting http://www.AchieveEzine.com