Improve Your Self-Talk

Here’s a great talk on Self-Talk & Self-Esteem:

If you want any facet of your life to improve, you must start by improving your self-talk.

The Law of Attraction Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

Ask a self-proclaimed expert how to apply positive thinking or the Law of Attraction in order to improve your life and he will probably suggest any number of available tools like positive affirmations, subliminal messaging, vision boards, mind movies, self-hypnosis CDs, and so on and so forth.  What he may not tell you, however, is that using these tools may actually do more harm than good!  It’s not that he’s purposely trying to harm or even mislead you.  He may just simply not be aware of the possible dangers in using such tools without sufficient background knowledge.

In a study conducted by Canadian psychologists, Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick, it was found that positive self-statements or affirmations actually make people who are already down on themselves feel worse rather than better.  The reason for this is that a person already low on self-esteem is more likely to view a positive affirmation as a contradictory thought.  So, instead of making them feel better about themselves, the affirmation must do battle with a lifetime full of contradictory experiences, ultimately losing out and giving way to the exact opposite effect of what was intended.  Anyone understanding the true power of the Law of Attraction should immediately recognize the negative scope of such a finding. 

The Law of Attraction is constantly at work in everyone’s day-to-day life, bringing about events and experiences that are in line with each person’s thoughts and own self-image.  Attempting to change a subconsciously rooted image, constructed through years of personal experience, with one positive, yet contradictory affirmation, is sheer lunacy.  Instead, it simply intensifies feelings of low self-worth, causing a person to focus even more on negative thoughts, leading to more and more negative experiences. So, what then can a person with low self-esteem do to escape this downward spiral?

Fortunately, there are ways to get around this problem, but it becomes much more complicated when the positive image or affirmation you’re trying to adopt conflicts with your subconscious blueprint.  Simply repeating the image or affirmation a number of times in this case will not allow you to achieve your intended result.  Instead you have to get to the root of the problem by closely examining the origins of your limiting belief and then eliminating, or at least neutralizing that belief until it no longer conflicts with the message you are attempting to convey to your subconscious mind.  How we do that, I will have to cover in a future post.

My Secrets to You,

Ron