Affirmations as a tool to achieving goals: Do they work?

Do affirmations work?

Affirmations are positive statements of intent. The theory is that daily repetition of affirmations can lead to changes in thinking and beliefs which will in turn lead to better outcomes and achievement of dreams and goals.

There are those that rubbish the idea, and the zealots who religiously repeat the affirmations like religious incantations. And of course there is the third group of people who sit on the fence. So who’s right? And how do we measure the results?

At the end of the day I think it boils down to outcomes. Before we look at affirmations, let’s consider what happens in science. Harking back to my high school years I can remember in the fifth form that if we wanted to find out if something was true, we would construct a hypothesis and then test it.

Let’s imagine we’re testing a new weight loss pill. In order to test the pill we would take a sample of people and give half of them the weight loss pill. The other half (control group) would receive a placebo that contains only sugar.

Does anyone know what happens in real life when we give people a placebo? If you guessed that some of the group show the same weight loss results as those on the real weight loss pills go to the top of the class!

The reality is that some people will experience the benefits of weight loss even when they’re taking the sugar pill because psychologically they have convinced themselves that the pill they’re taking is the real thing.

So what are the implications for affirmations and real life? Quite simply, if you can convince yourself of something then it can come true. It’s what you believe that matters. Repeating the words without emotion is unlikely to have impact, but if you’re prepared to actively visualise the positive results you desire, and act accordingly you can achieve incredible results. This is important…. You must believe, but you must also ACT!