The Game of What if….
I was talking to one of my co-journeyers yesterday about affirmations and incantations.
Oxford Dictionary definitions:
Affirmation – “the action or process of affirming something”
Incantation – “a series of words said as a magic spell or charm”
Interesting definitions, don’t you think?
These words tend to be used fairly interchangeably and are not really understood by most people. But the difference is critical. If you want to use an affirmation or incantation to manifest or change something in your life, then you need to understand the difference. Otherwise, you may find that you are actually doing the opposite of what you want!
Affirmation: stating, or affirming, that something is actually true.
Let’s say you want to lose weight. Let’s say you currently weigh 11 ½ stone (161lbs) but you want to weigh 9 ½ stone (133lbs). Now remember that an affirmation affirms something as true. It needs to be a statement of truth. But you also know that to get to your goal, you need to flood your mind with the idea of the goal. So you might affirm: “I now weigh 9 ½ stone.” You state this over and over and expect to reach your goal, but it doesn’t happen. Why? Because it is not true. At the moment you still weigh 11 ½ stone and your subconscious mind knows that. Every time you affirm “I now weigh 9 ½ stone.” your subconscious mind laughs at you and says “No you don’t!”
You’re sending out a mixed message to the universe, and to your own mind. No wonder you don’t get there!
What is it that enables us to manifest anything? It’s feeling. Emotion. If your mouth is saying one thing, but your emotion is different, you cannot get to where you want to be. You want to weigh 9 ½ stone, but emotionally you feel fat and a failure because you know that the truth is you weigh 11 ½ stone.
So how do you get to where you want to be? You have to affirm truth. This is done by using “getting to” words. If you are really trying to lose weight, you are exercising and changing your diet, taking active steps to lose weight, then you can truthfully affirm: “I am now getting slimmer and slimmer.” Or “Every day in every way I am getting closer and closer to weighing 9 ½ stone.” Your mind will believe that. It’s truth.
But is it compelling enough?
Incantations – magic words!
What makes incantation words magic? It is the feeling that they invoke. That’s all. The vibration, created by the feeling that the words invoke is what gives them the power to manifest, like magic. We’re not talking hocus pocus here. We’re talking about designing a statement that has such power to it that it inspires a feeling inside of you that is so strong and so compelling that you are almost automatically drawn to doing what you need to do to create the outcome or draw it to you.
The problem with most incantations is that they end up just like untruthful affirmations. This is where you have to get creative. Using our weight loss example, an incantation would be something that inspires you to reach the goal, rather than a statement of the goal. It could be something like: “I am the Queen (King/Master etc) of my mind and body. I, and I alone control what I think, do, eat and say. Therefore I can weigh whatever I chose to weigh.” All of that is true. All of that is inspirational.
By saying this incantation every day, you are training your mind to think this way, instead of giving in to thoughts that take away your own power to reach your goal. You are inspiring yourself to reach your goal. You are drowning out the naysayer in your mind that says “You can’t do it.” with a positive mindset. That naysayer, by the way, is not stating truth in the same way that your unconscious mind in the affirmation example was stating truth. Your actual weight is a statement of fact. What you can or can’t do is a statement of opinion. What the incantation does, is change your beliefs and opinions. When you change your beliefs and opinions, you change your life. That is why incantations are so powerful, why they’re “magic”. They put YOU in control of yourself.
What if…..
There’s one more element that you need to give the incantation or the truthful affirmation strength. You have to use your imagination. Without imagining that you are on the way to achieving your goal, without being able to see yourself as already there, you won’t be able to get there. The way to a goal is not to take steps to get there, but to start with the goal clearly in mind and reverse engineer what you need to do to get there.
It’s a bit like planting a seed. You start with the idea that you want to grow a carrot (or weigh 9 ½ stone). You have in your mind’s eye a picture of a carrot (you at 9 ½ stone). Then you plant the seed, then you water it, then you make sure it isn’t choked by other weeds, you nurture it, and in time the carrot grows. Most people give up on goals too soon because they don’t see the physical manifestation. But that’s the whole point. Goals are seeds. We don’t know how long it takes for an idea to manifest, but it will do, if you don’t give up on it and do the right things to nurture it.
If you forget you planted a carrot seed, or you go on holiday and forget to water it, it will die. To keep your goals growing to manifestation, you have to keep nurturing them. To do that you have to keep the image of the goal clearly in your mind. You have to keep the feeling, the emotion, of having it strong enough to keep you nurturing the seed to fruition.
How do you do that? You ask yourself:
“How would it feel to weigh 9 ½ stone” (or whatever your goal is).
And then you let your imagination run free. See yourself that way, feel in your body how you would feel, experience all the emotions you would feel, see yourself doing all the things you want to do that being that weight will allow you to do. Go on a rant of the imagination. Daydream…
What if I really did weigh that?
What if….
How wonderful would it be if…..
How great would I feel if…..
Go on. Try it. What’s your goal? What incantation would inspire you? Now let your imagination run wild. Feel as if the goal is already achieved and hold onto that feeling, never let it go. Never stop watering the seed of your desire.