Articles - Why Affirmations Don't Work
Why Affirmations Don't Work And How You Can Replace Them With Directed Questions™ To Get The Results You Want

Asking the Right Questions
Asking the Right Questions
February 23rd, 2006 by Steve Pavlina

Questions are the Answer
Awaken the Giant Within - Anthony Robbins (p177-200)

Finding that i need to refocus on my goals, i am just updating my positive thinking patterns. Like most things, failure to practise regularly can stagnate continuous advancement. I have found recently some of my thinking patterns to be quite unproductive.

Are you currently using Affirmations at the moment?
How are you finding the use of Affirmations? Beneficial or not?
Have you ever used Questioning instead?

Hi Simon

I'd not considered this consciously before your question so this is a raw answer. I utilise both affirmations and questions and I consider both to be beneficial. I'm not exactly sure what my strategy is for selecting a question or affirmation hwever on a short ananlysis I think it is based on the following:
Question when have big chunk goal. Questioning helps to fill in the small chunk path.
Affirmation when change required is smaller and particularly when the outcome is a change of state.

I've only considered this for a few moment while I've typed so I'll ponder a little more and add any new information as I become aware of it.

Cheers for now
Chris

I use questions to work on a well formed outcome. I then tend to use visualisation and future pacing. Seems more effective for me than affirmations.

Hi All,

Human beings are meaning making machines. Directed questions can certainly be a powerful way of harnessing this natural tendency to make powerful internal representations which can pull us into new subjective realities, in my experience.

On a slight tangent, somebody trademarked the term 'directed questions'? I Often WonderTM at the Bizzare MindsetTM that seems to be prevalent at the trademark bureau for awarding such Spurious ClaimsTM...

Be Well,

Michael Perez

Having trained to Practitioner level with Rex Steven Sikes (at Idea-Seminars.com which was shown by the 1st poster in this thread, I am an enormous fan of his Directed Questions.

Part of the trick is to build in tons of presuppositions into the questions, and use complex syntax to confuse the conscious mind, but send the unconscious mind off in search of multiple answers to the question asked.

Rex's contention (and I agree) is that telling yourself affirmations that something you want to come true is already true -- gets 2 responses from the mind. (E.g. "I've already built a dream business and sold it for 100 million, and now I can travel the world and live in my dream home and bla bla bla...." )

(Cognitive response 1) WOW, that sure would be amazing! Cool!
(Cognitive response 2) Not YET, buddy! Uh-uh, no you haven't!

Rex suggests that creating this incongruent set of responses is not optimal for achieving faster, more profound results.

Better to ask a directed question with complex syntax (and maybe even some time distortion with the future perfect tense), like, "I'm not sure whether it'll have taken me one year or more to have built a powerfully successful startup, but won't it have been amazing to have then sold it for perhaps 50, 100, or 200 Million -- and then find myself living the life I've always dreamed of living?"

Directed questions -- VERY good stuff.

Regards,

- Jonathan Altfeld

There are many effective alternatives to using affirmations. Why waste time telling yourself an affirmation 20 times a day for 20 days (or whatever number of reiterations are suggested for the particular affirmation ritual one subscribes to) when the desired state can be elicited or coded using NLP?

For some people who were into affirmations Jules and I have used a combination of a new behaviour generator, congruency signals and dropping the result in the past (on a timeline) to create a sense of familiarity with the desired change or new skill for the person.

Of course there are many ways of using NLP models for an outcome once rather than a long slog using a questionable ritual. Frankly the epistemology that accompanies affirmations is dodgey from my NLP perspective.

Regards

- Chris Collingwood