Talking to yourself with affirmations

Affirmations for Self Talk

Affirmations are powerful and if you get them right, they are an invaluable tool for self improvement. Yet, if it were so easy then why don’t we all just affirm our dreams and realize them? Well, one of the reasons is that we are a bit more sophisticated and evolved than most of the personal development gurus would want you to think. Just because you repeat a positive phrase to yourself over and over does not mean you actually believe it.


Beliefs govern our lives. One of the ways of looking at this is understanding our learning process. We either generalize information, or suppress it, and often it is a combination of both so that we distort it. We unconsciously tend towards “a more of the same” type of information processing, which means that the first beliefs we created are often the strongest and the most difficult to change.

While beliefs are subjective: i.e. they are true for us, they may or may not be true for others. Knowledge, on the other hand, objective in the sense that you can prove it and so can others. We often confuse the two, thus loosing a very important ally that is our rational mind.

Modern psychology suggests that there multiple levels of consciousness and that there are different parts to our personality. Without going into any detail or preference of these abstractions, one model which resonates well for beliefs is to imagine that we have a dreamer, a realist and a doubter part to our persona.

Walt Disney Technique

Walt Disney Technique for Affirmations
Walt Disney’s signature. He developed a creativity technique which is well adapted for good affirmations


Walt Disney was well known for applying this technique for problem solving and creativity. He would gather his team and get them all going so that everyone was in a dreamer mood. Then they would go into the realist mood and finally the “devil’s advocate” mood. Records state that they actually changed rooms to enforce the different modalities and used this technique to come up with the most amazing ideas. Applying this technique to fine tune your affirmations can be extremely powerful because you will be completely congruent.

The Dreamer

The approach I would like you to test for yourself is the following. Take a blank piece of paper and write down your ultimate goals. Be a dreamer by all means, imagine everything is possible, and let your creativity blossom. Make sure you leave a good amount of space between each item; you should have something between three to eight phrases on your list. Then take a break, and I mean it. Stand up, walk around, move your body and get back to your piece of paper.


The Realist

Now be a realist. Read what you’ve written and only ADD whatever comes to your mind to make your goals more realistic. You can not change what you wrote down in the first round but you can add to it. Make sure you go through each one and still leave enough room on the paper for the third round. Now take another break like you did before.

The Critic

This time, you are a doubter. Let your doubting part express itself. Whatever you come up with write it down, again you can only ADD, no cancelling or changing what you’ve written. If you’ve played it by the rules then compliment yourself, well done! Keep this paper in a safe place; you’re going to go back to it later on.

Accept Yourself

There are several purposes to this exercise. The first one is to accept yourself for who you are. We all have these parts in our personalities and often they all talk to us at the same time. By giving each of these their separate voice you free them from competition. You’re also educating yourself so that you give your creative self freedom to express itself without criticism. At the same time, you’re also developing trust in yourself because asking your realistic and doubtful parts to contribute to the creation process.

You should repeat this exercise once a week for a couple of weeks. Each time, you’ll feel an alignment building up and your congruence with regard to your goals will increase. Now you can go back and choose your affirmations. You’ll be amazed how good these affirmations will sound to you. And because you won’t be fighting back at the unconscious level, these affirmations will actually sink in and get you moving towards your goals.

So go ahead, give your creative part the freedom to speak first, add on your realism and critics then choose your affirmations to pave your road of self improvement.

Live your dreams to the fullest and be your best,




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