In Part 1 of this series, I introduced you to my discovery of AFFORMATIONS — empowering questions (NOT “affirmations”) that immediately change your subconscious thought patterns from negative to positive.
The staggering realization I made in The Shower on that fateful morning was that you create your reality in two ways: by the statements you say to yourself and others, and by the questions you ask yourself and others.
Traditional success teachers have focused a great deal of energy telling you to change your statements. But until The Shower, no one had fully realized, or shown how to harness, the awesome power of what happens when you change the questions.
Your mind has an Automatic Search Function, which means that when you ask yourself a question, your mind automatically begins to Search for an answer. (Psychologists have referred to this function of the human brain as the “embedded presupposition factor.”)
Even as far back as Biblical times, we’ve been reminded, “You have not because you ask not,” and “Ask and you shall receive.” If you only change the statements you say without changing the questions you ask, you’re missing out on one of the easiest, yet most powerful ways to change your life that’s ever been discovered.
The 4 Steps to Create Afformations That Can Change Your Life
Step 1: Ask yourself what you want.
You’ve probably done this step before. In Step 1, you can use goals you’ve previously written, or start from scratch. You decide. Please note that traditional success literature stops right here! They told us to “set your goals”, and then say “affirmations” that attempt to convince your brain that you will have what you want” sometime.
For example, in Step 1, you might decide that your goal is to be happy, healthy and wealthy (hard to imagine anyone NOT wanting those things). So, you would write: “I want to be happy, healthy and wealthy.”
Now we go to the breakthrough step…
Step 2: Form a QUESTION that assumes that What You Want is already true.
In Step 2, you ask a question that assumes that what you want is already so, has already happened, or is already true. This is the key to creating Afformations that can change your life.
Your Life is a reflection of the unconscious assumptions you make about life and your relationship to it. If you could find a mechanism that could record your subconscious thought-seeds and play them back to you, they might sound something like this: “Why am I so broke? Why don’t I have enough? Why aren’t I more successful?”, and so forth.
Well, a mechanism does exist that records and reflects your subconscious thought-seeds — that mechanism is called Your Life!
Step 2 of The Afformations Method is to begin to change the quality of communication with the world inside yourself. This is the fastest, most effective way I’ve ever seen to immediately change the quality of your communication with the world inside of you the world outside of you.
Using our example above, you would ask yourself, “Why am I so happy, healthy and wealthy?”
Step 3: Give yourself to the question.
The point of Afformations does not lie in finding “the answer”, but in asking better questions. When you ask better questions, your mind will automatically focus on things you’ve probably never focused on before. When you do this, the results will amaze you.
Let’s say you want to find a new restaurant in your city. You go to Google and type “restaurants” and the city you’re in. What you’re really doing is asking a question you don’t know the answer to, yet.
It’s the same with Afformations. You do not need to know, for example, why you are rich. You do, however, need to ASK why you are rich. Why? Because asking that kind of empowering question automatically focuses your mind on what you HAVE vs. what you LACK.
Once you ask a question of your mind, whether you know it or not, your mind automatically starts to Search for the answer without your conscious volition.
Which brings us to the fourth essential step of The Afformations Method – the final one you MUST do if you want this method to work for you…
Step 4: Take new ACTIONS based on your new assumptions about life.
You are, right now, making hundreds, perhaps thousands of unconscious assumptions about life and your relationship to it. These assumptions form the basis of how you go through life — positively or negatively, with confidence or shyness, from lack or from enough, from Love or from Fear.
For instance, if you assume that life is for you, you will naturally take actions based on the belief that “things will work out for the best” — and your results will naturally follow. If you assume that life is against you, however, then your actions will be hesitant, based on fear and “why bother” — and your results will naturally follow.
The Afformation Method makes conscious and clear that which has, until now, been only subconscious and hidden.
For example, a confident person will have an easier time in life, whether building relationships or building a business. Traditional teachers told us that we should “be confident”. But where does the behavior of confidence really come from? It comes from your hidden, subconscious assumptions about how life is going to treat you. The point of The Afformation Method is not to find “the answer” to your questions. The point is to change what your mind automatically FOCUSES ON. Since you are now going to FORM positive questions that assume that what you want is already true, your mind has no choice but to find a way to make it so.
Can you see how this process must, by definition, change your life? I know of no other method that can yield such dramatic results with so little effort. Using Afformations, you can take direct, conscious control of your subconscious thoughts — change the questions, change your results, and change your life.
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Noah St. John is the inventor of Afformations and bestselling author of The Secret Code of Success: 7 Hidden Steps to More Wealth and Happiness (HarperCollins). Noah is the world’s most-quoted expert on how to clear your head trash. He’s appeared in over 2,000 media outlets including CNN, ABC, NBC, The Washington Post and PARADE Magazine. Visit his web site to get FREE Access to his online video training series designed to accelerate your income, boost your Self-confidence, and make Success automatic.