Have you ever tried positive affirmations, thinking they would help you think your way to a new life?  And it didn’t work?  On this episode, we’re talking about what’s more powerful than affirmations to make change happen.  How to use what our mind naturally does to help us succeed at what’s most important to us.

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On This Episode

Rhythm of Life – It’s Perfect.  NOT.
Random Riffs – What’s it For?
Feature Segment – My Self-Improvement Experiment — Afformations

Today’s Quote

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.  –Zig Ziglar

Rhythm of Life – It’s Perfect. NOT.

I’m standing in my voice teacher’s studio, playing the recording of one of my latest songs.  We worked like crazy on this at the previous lesson, and I want him to hear what I did with it.

“Hmmmmm. Good.  A little too much vibrato there.  Oh and there.  Can you try to get rid of the vibrato on some of those held out low notes?”

Uh no.  I can’t.

“It’s done,” I say.  Final production, mixing.  Everything.  It’s done.  No more changes.”

“Well then, it’s perfect,” he says.

It’s not perfect.  We both know it.  But he told me a while back that I’ll have to call it done at some point.  That no singer is ever satisfied with their performance.  They always want one more take.

I’m making the best art I can right now.  Writing the best songs, singing the best, doing the best podcast I can.  Right now.  That won’t be my best 3 months from now.  Or 6 or 12 months from now.

It won’t be your best work either.  So, get used to it.

Random Riffs – What’s it For?

I was thinking today about cynicism.  How we hear something great, and immediately look for the dirty secret just under the surface.

And you know what? None of us has 100% pure motives.  That’s okay.  It doesn’t mean we’re evil or wrong, or what there’s a dirty secret under the rocks.  It just means we’re human.

Because we CAN commit to a cause bigger than us.  We can sacrifice ourselves for the greater good.  We can.  Even when we want to be seen, noticed, respected, or even loved.

It’s better to do good with mixed motives than to do  nothing until you make sure your motives are completely pure.

Feature Segment:  My Self-Improvement Experiment – Afformations

Positive affirmations.  They’re often touted as a way to make massive change happen.  Because if you change your mind, you change your life.  If you change your script, you change your life.

The change looks like this:  Speak -> Change Your Mind -> Change Actions -> Change Results.  As you can see, the affirmations start the process, according to this line of thinking.

Your life becomes a reflection of the thoughts you consistently think.

But here’s the thing.  They don’t always work.  Sometimes they don’t even work at all.

According to St. John, there’s a Belief Gap between where you are now and where you want to be.  If you can’t believe you can get there, you won’t.  Until you bridge the belief gap for the outcomes you want, it will be difficult to make the leap to reach the new life and create your new reality.  (Remember The Big Leap?  –Gay Hendricks even goes so far to say that we’ll subconsciously do things to undermine our desired result.)

When we use positive affirmations, our minds often say, “Yeah, right!”  And that does nothing to bridge the belief gap.

If statements don’t work, then what does?  Questions.  So Noah St. John uses the power of questions to make change happen.  He calls these questions Afformations, and uses them  to bridge the gap.

Listen to the episode to hear just what type of questions these are, what questions not to ask, and how to use these questions in your life.

Keep this in mind though – the questions aren’t what changes your life.  Action is what changes your life.  Afformations prime the pump so you are ready and willing to take action.

Key lessons from this book:

1. When you want something and don’t believe you can have it, what will your actions be?   Half-hearted at best, which doesn’t lead to success.
2. In order for Afformations to work, you need to internalize them. The best way is through listening.
3. Fear is defined as “the anticipation of pain”. This definition works for fear in light of actual danger, as well as fear in the face of perceived danger that doesn’t exist.

How did the Action Steps work?  -I’m not sure yet. It’s going to take time to internalize my new Afformations.  I did find that doing them was powerful already.  They built on each other throughout the book.

What I’m going to do next:

I’m going to combine the conclusions from Marie Forleo’s book Everything is Figureoutable and this book to create one big plan.  And use Afformations and prayer to help me move forward with my plan.  I think the two books together are more powerful than either was alone.  And combined with The Big Leap for context?  Amazing.

What can you do?

1. Get the book
2. Write your own Afformations and record them.
3. Listen to them at least once a day. Speak them out loud too.
4. Start taking action and watch what happens.

Let me know in the comments what you're choosing to do as a result of listening or reading.

P.S., The other day I wrote a song based on a poem written by a friend.  It's dedicated to those who lost loved ones in the Milwaukee shooting last week.  We must make a stand against violence and choose love.  Here's the song on YouTube.  Please share it with your friends.

Self-Improvement Series

127 – Series Introduction
128 – Everything is Figureoutable
130 – My One Word Review
131 – Everything is Figureoutable Part 2

NOTE:  If you buy a book through one of my links, I'll make about $.10.