Exercise: Affirming Your Worth via Positive Affirmations

This exercise is suggested by Richard La Ruina in The Natural.

Write a list of all the things you like about yourself on one side of a piece of paper.

Then, on the other side, write out all of the things that you don't like. Notice how your mood is affected differently when you read each side.

By writing and then using positive affirmations, you counteract the generally negative influences that other people, the media, and society have on your self-esteem and belief system.

Keep your list of positive affirmationa about yourself in a notebook by your bed.

Read them as frequently as you can.

[...] record [your] self-affirmations onto an MP3 player and play them on a low-volume loop for hours. This strategy allows the positive beliefs to sink deep into your subconscious mind while your conscious mind is distracted by day-to-day things.

Your affirmations should be written as positive statements written in the present tense:

"I am friendly," not "I will be friendly"

Your affirmations should avoid negative words:

"I'm not an idiot" should be "I am clever". "I don't get rejected" should be "All women love me".

The subconscious does not understand negatives. Richard gives this example:

Imagine if someone told you not to think about a pink elephant. What would happen? You'd think of a pink elephant. So saying "I'm not a loser who gets rejected and everyone hates," is just as bad as saying, "I am a loser who gets rejected and everyone hates."

They should be based on how you picture your ideal self--the person you'd like to be, you at your best.

They should make you feel something when you say them. If you write an affirmation and it doesn't have that effect, change the language around or scrap it altogether.

Richard writes:

You can write affirmations as individual statements or in paragraph form. However you choose to present them, they will change your life. I wrote my first affirmations in mid-2003, and they all came true within a couple of years. It's spooky how it happened. At the time they were outside the realm of possibility, but my subconscious helped me make them a reality. I urge you, please don't write these off as silly. They work

Below are some examples of affirmations you can use. However, please be sure to make yours meaningful to you.

- I am a leader

- I am interesting

- I am a success in all that I do

- I can attract any woman I want

- I know my purpose

- I am confident in who i am

- I am cool, calm, and collected

- I am charismatic

- My world and my life are attractive and interesting

- People meet me and want to know me

- I am interested in other people

- I meet fun positive people