Positive affirmations are one of the most powerful tools you can use in your quest for happiness, fulfillment, emotional freedom and general well-being. Once you have identified things in your life that you would like to transform, creating and using affirmations can really bring positive changes.

Positive affirmations are statements that you make to yourself. These statements are positive and declare that the change you want to see is already in the process of happening.

If you want to find and do work that you love, try an affirmation such as, ‘I am now creating my perfect career.’ Also try adding an affirmation like, ‘the perfect opportunities are opening up.’

This second affirmation helps you to trust that the chances and situations that you need in order to create your ideal career and coming to you. While you should also keep actively taking practical steps to create your career path, affirming that opportunities will come to you helps you to magnetize these circumstances without needing to make too much effort.

Adding a phrase like, ‘easily and effortlessly,’ to the beginning or end of each affirmation also helps to lift the pressure of having to try and ‘make things happen.’

While I don’t suggest that you become totally passive, trying too hard to force things to happen doesn’t usually work. Trying too hard can actually have the opposite effect to what you want. A phrase I love is from author Barry Stevens- ‘don’t push the river, it flows anyway.’ A reminder to let the forces of nature do their job.

Using affirmations stops you from feeling that you are not doing anything to improve your situation. Many positive changes come as a result of internal rather than external work.

Affirmations also help you to see and take the steps that you need to take towards reaching your goal. They can clear your vision greatly. Often the steps that we could take to bring greater happiness are right in front of us, but our minds can be so clouded with negative thoughts, confusion, and limiting beliefs, that we don’t see what’s right there.

Positive affirmations work by reprogramming your thinking and beliefs. The way to make them work is by constant repetition.

Affirmations train your subconscious to believe that what you want is not only possible, but that it is already happening. It is important to phrase your affirmations in the present and not future tense. Rather than saying, ‘I will achieve financial success,’ say, ‘I am now creating financial success,’ and by using affirmations, this is true! With this positive affirmation, you are creating the positive mindset that will empower you to create the physical reality you want. It also helps you to magnetize the opportunities you need to create that reality.

Initially, you will probably feel very strange saying things that go against your ingrained limiting beliefs. Push through the discomfort and keep saying them.

You will find that after a certain number of repetitions, you will start to feel that your affirmation is becoming less unbelievable to you. Even when your conscious mind is rebelling against what you are saying, you subconscious mind is soaking it up anyway. The subconscious mind is the part that works to make thoughts a reality anyway. You just need to train your conscious mind not to get in the way.

After a time, you will find that you actually, consciously begin to believe what you have been affirming.

The human mind is extremely suggestible. It has been shown that with enough repetition, people can be trained to believe almost anything.

This is why many of us have a poor self image, and various negative beliefs about ourselves and life. We have been trained over a period of many years to believe these things- both by ourselves, and other people. Even if we know on a conscious level that these things are not true, the beliefs are there regardless.

Positive affirmations work to replace these old beliefs that we have learned, with new, positive beliefs that we choose consciously.

The key to using positive affirmations is frequency and repetition. To create a new belief, and attract opportunities, it takes regular mental training.

Once you decide what area of your life you want to change, create one or more positive affirmations stating that this goal is already being achieved. Then use your affirmation(s) every day.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of frequent and continued repetition. Consistency and persistence is the key to making affirmations work.

The ways you can include the use of affirmations in your life are many and varied.

You can say them aloud, say them silently, read them, and write them. Read them aloud and record it. Play the recording in your car, while you cook dinner, even while you sleep. Make posters or little notes of your affirmations and place them around your home and workplace. My favorite way to use affirmations is to match them to my breathing. As I breathe in for four counts, I silently say, ‘I am easily and effortlessly,’ and on the breath out for four counts I continue, ‘learning to trust my heart.’ I repeat this many, many times- sometimes while I am driving my car, other times while I am exercising. Taking a long walk beside the ocean while repeating affirmations can give a wonderful feeling of mental and physical well-being.

Whatever it is you want to change, and however you choose to use positive affirmations, with patience and repetition, you will find that they work! Using affirmations will bring a noticeable positive shift to both your thinking, and your circumstances.

A native of Australia, Amanda Harvey is currently based in Taiwan. Working as a teacher, speaker, and writer, she has spent the last decade living in various countries throughout Europe and Asia. Through her life experiences, Amanda has developed a strong passion for encouraging others to embrace their differences and become empowered to choose their own paths. Amanda is the author of two books. To read more, please visit www.choosing-life-my-way.com/index.html