There are two types of affirmations. Each type has two parts that make up the whole of it. Without acting upon this truth, our affirmation work becomes something other than effective. Let’s look at this. Affirmations are effective when they are repeated. Customarily, that repeating would look like us, finding a favorite affirmation, such as “My life now flows with money” and then repeating these words over and over, with the intention that more money manifests for us. Affirmations are associated with courses, classes, and conferences. They are used worldwide, and it is the practice of them that is effective. Yet whether we are aware of this or not, we are always practicing affirmations, twenty-four seven, either deliberately or by default. If we practice type one, the pre-programmed default type, then we get negative results. If we practice type two, through our deliberate practice, then we expect to get the results we expect to get from the particular affirmation we are practicing. We expect to have those results, even when at times we can’t figure out why our manifestations haven’t arrived yet. Here’s why!

Type one is an affirmation whose guidance for our energy is negative in nature. For instance, to say to ourselves, “I can’t do that” would be negative because its guidance leads us to not accomplishing what we set out to do. But it’s not only in the words that we are guided. We are also guided by how we feel when this affirmation comes up for us. We feel resigned, and it is that resignation, combined with the words that flow from that feeling called “I can’t” that makes this particular affirmation so effective. What it is affirming is that you are in that moment, creating the feeling of resignation, which then propels out the necessary words called “I can’t” which inform you of how you are feeling. Hence, this affirmation which affirms what you are creating, has two parts. One feels, and the other, thinks.

Because feelings come without words, this first part of any affirmation can be a subtle way that we trip ourselves up. If we don’t address this first part before we do any and all of our by choice affirmation work, then that work will not be effective. We will affirm, and then get frustrated over why what we told ourselves we wanted, just isn’t coming yet. Think about it. If feelings of resignation are the real source of “I can’t” then no matter what new words replace the old ones, that feeling still is there, and what you are doing is still feeling it, even though your words tell you otherwise! Now in doing so, you are caught up in trying to live a lie, that of telling yourself that you can, while feeling resignation, or that you cannot! How many times have you told yourself you are rich, when in truth you were not? How did this feel? Like you were lying to yourself? Well, you were! But take heart, there is an effective way to do our affirmation work that gets us through this very human dilemma. And it’s one that every single one of us, bar none, have to get through in order to be more and more effective with our affirmations.

How then, in the example provided, do we feel rich, when we are not? That’s easy, tell the truth! Truth aligns our energy, and lies disperse it. We want to do this because aligned energy all goes in the direction you desire it to go in, and dispersed energy just goes everywhere. The affirmed truth I had to tell myself about being rich, since it was my desire to become rich, wasn’t the lie that I already was rich. What I had to come up with was the truth, that “in every moment I am becoming richer and richer.” All the while knowing that my becoming was adding up to then being rich. In this way, if I found even a penny on the ground, this truth was affirmed. Because which part of a few million dollars is a penny not? Through this affirmation I was telling the truth now, and then teaching myself to tell the truth later. All aligned energy! My energy was the most effective as it was directed by my affirmation work, because it wasn’t being used to suppress feelings, or to fight a lie. All my energy was being used to “become richer and richer” in each moment.

What telling myself the truth did, was to have me feel good about myself and what I was doing, and that’s the important part of affirmation work. This is the first and most important part of the two parts of affirmations, that of having how you feel be aligned with the words you choose. In every case, there is some positive way you feel about what you desire to have, because you wouldn’t desire to have something if you didn’t feel good about it! For instance, with regard to relationships, you can say to yourself that you just “Love being in love” because you do! The fact that thinking about loving being in love feels good, will then attract that love to you. You don’t say “I am with my love” when you are not. That would be using your energy in misalignment. Alignment is the first part of feeling good about your affirming words, and then there are the words themselves, two parts, twice as effective.

In the case of positive affirmations, you have to find those words that make you feel good, because they are the truth. Because no matter what the words are, if you still feel the same as you always felt, resigned, or upset, or angry, then all the words in the world won’t shift your energy one bit. Angry feelings produce angry results, and angry money is always lost to those who manage to create it in this way. And people do. They create a lot of money through being motivated by either anger or fear, and then they promptly lose it. They lose it by either actually losing it, or by being so guided by anger that they never really enjoy what they have, and so are completely blind to their abundance. They feel poor, even though they are rich! And that feeling poor is a lie as well. I have worked with billionaires who were some of the poorest people in their minds that I have ever known. No amount of money will cure this kind of resignation, if the feelings behind your actions are not shifted. What shifts them? To begin to tell the truth, and then to continue to tell the truth.

Truth is, most of us desire to have more money. We like the freedom of choice that money gives to us. Or more love. We like the way being loved, and being in love feels. Or most of us desire more____________you fill in the blank! More seems to be our hard wired request, and it’s through affirmations that we feel we can have that more, in whatever form we desire our good to come in. We can have that more, and we can have it through the direction our energy is guided in by our affirmation work. But we can only do this if we pay attention to both parts of that work, the words and the feelings we are creating. Once we do that, then hold onto your hat, because the flow of good that comes our way will be so overwhelming, that there will be times when we have to deliberately slow it down just so that we can enjoy it as it comes. Now that’s affirmation work I can live with!