Affirmations alone can’t shift your reality, but here’s what can…

I am a strong, smart, powerful woman. I create my own reality and that reality is abundant, nurturing, and fun…

…that is, until I encounter a life situation where I feel powerless, dumb, deficient, or frustrated!

Have you ever tried to use affirmations to shift your reality, only to find yourself struggling even more? Why don’t they always work? It seems straightforward enough: focus your mind on something positive and eventually your life will align with your intention. The truth, however, is that more is always at play.

Sometimes working with the mind can seem abstract, so let’s start with an example from the body. There was a time earlier this year when I experienced sudden, extreme contractions of my right mid-thoracic ribs. I’d be going about my daily life, sometimes just sitting still, and would suddenly have to double over to my right and pause there, just waiting for the pain to pass. I tried all the massage and movement techniques I could think of (and I’ve been a bodyworker for over twenty years!) but nothing shifted this pattern. Then I went to see my physical therapist and she said (more or less), “Oh, your liver isn’t moving in a healthy pattern, it’s stuck.” Well!

Your body, she explained, will do everything it can to prioritize your organs, even at the expense of your joints and limbs. Each of your organs has a natural pattern of movement called “motility.” I spent years working with organ motility as an abdominal massage therapist, yet I couldn’t see the forest for the trees when there was an organ issue in my own body. I kept trying to work with it at the level of muscles and bones, and it didn’t get better until I got to the root. I received some high-quality physical therapy and stopped taking a new medication which had a listed side effect of liver spasm!

From a process oriented perspective, my primary (known, conscious) process was, “I have tension in my ribs.” My secondary (less known, less conscious) process was, “My liver is in spasm as it tries to deal with a toxic medication.” I was trying to apply a sort of affirmation, “I can relax and re-orient my muscles,” but my body literally wouldn’t let me do that because there was something much more vital and essential to protect. I needed to stop poisoning my liver!

Now, with this concrete physical example in mind, let’s explore this from an emotional, psychological, or spiritual perspective. Let’s take an intention that I’ve worked on with many clients over the years: “I live in abundance.” Usually, this means someone wants to make more money, and often it means they want to make enough money to even meet their basic needs. Despite what The Secret would have you believe, this is never a simple intention.

First of all, we live in a society where wealth is unequally distributed. Often this has been true across multiple generations and someone is trying to overcome centuries of poverty with a single affirmation. Meanwhile, there’s a long line of ancestors in the background waiting to be heard and affirmed themselves, and there are long lines at the food bank affirming to one’s everyday consciousness that poverty is a real and present danger. An affirmation cannot override this reality.

Secondly, poverty consciousness–even if one objectively has money in the bank and a roof over one’s head–is linked to countless other aspects of life.

• What was the consciousness around, or access to, money in your household growing up?
• Do you feel free to be who you are in your personal beliefs, spiritual practices, or sexual orientation; have you had to hide or play small?
• Do you have a calling in life that you are ignoring and pushing away because you believe you can’t fulfill it?
• Have you experienced physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, leading you to be in a constant state of stress and trauma that feels like whatever you do isn’t enough?

I could go on and on with questions like these because no individual experience is the same. But you can’t affirm your way out of personal or inter-generational trauma, you must resolve it at the level of the nervous system.

Thirdly, beliefs about money itself are layered and subtle. If you believe on a deep and subconscious level that money is the root of all evil, that successful business people are selfish and greedy, or that money is not spiritual, then you can say all the affirmations in the world and you won’t shift your core belief.

In all of these cases, the primary process says, “I live in abundance,” but the secondary process says something like, “I am afraid, I am hurting, I don’t want to identify with something bad and damaging, I am in solidarity with others who struggle, I won’t make money even to save my own life.” And then you don’t, and you wonder why your affirmation isn’t working.

Here’s the basic truth: you cannot override a fundamental need or foundational belief; you must address it directly. If you have a deep fear, you must support your nervous system to have experiences of safety. If you believe business is bad, you must encounter or design experiences of business being good. If you believe poverty is everywhere, you must find an imprint, a template, an example of someone living a positive life in abundance and allow your nervous system to learn that new way. There is no way around; the only way out is through.

I use the example of financial lack and abundance because it is common, even ubiquitous, as an intention that people (including myself) work with, but this concept of primary and secondary process applies to anything. If your conscious intention is one thing and your deeper belief, pattern, or loyalty is to something else, often to something of which you’re entirely unaware, then setting an intention to the contrary actually reinforces the secondary process.

I’ll say that again: setting an intention to the contrary actually reinforces the secondary process. It’s obvious on the physical level: trying to relax my muscles only reinforced my body’s efforts to protect my vital liver at all costs. It’s often less obvious on the psychological, emotional, or spiritual levels, but it’s no less real. Your psyche and spirit will do whatever is necessary to keep you aligned with the deeper truth whether that’s a need to address underlying fears or a calling to a bigger destiny. Affirmations will only work if they already support what is trying to unfold.

If you are in the habit of setting affirmations that don’t work, consider exploring what’s happening under the surface. One of the ways I explore what’s under the surface is to work with nighttime dreams. Often, we treat dreams as a one-way street; we sleep, dreams come to us, and sometimes we write them down or interpret them. It’s a haphazard system at best. But Dreamland is actually not only open to, but actually eager for, a two-way dialogue.

Keep a journal by your bed and get in the habit of writing down your dreams the moment you wake up, whenever you recall even a brief snippet of your dreaming. When you feel established in that habit, you can then begin to write an affirmation in your dream journal before you sleep. This affirmation should support your side of the two-way dream conversation. Something like, “Tonight in my dreams, I will receive insight into my issue of poverty consciousness.”

I once engaged in a series of dream intentions and conversations around this very issue, and the feedback from my dreams was deep and almost comical; my parents were selling a spacious, beautiful, one-story house to move into a shabby, run-down, cramped, multi-story rental apartment, yet ignoring the downgrade that was happening because of perceived luxuries such as multiple floors and large bathtubs in the rental! This dream and related dreams pointed out my blindspots around abundance.

Dreams give you real information you can use to create powerful and effective affirmations which are, in fact, reminders of what is already wanting to emerge. For example, from the dream above I could craft an affirmation like: “I see the true abundance that exists in my life and I cultivate luxury in the abundance that I already have.” To be clear, I neither own a house nor am I looking to sell one; the dreams speak in symbols, and I make use of the symbols to speak the language of my secondary process, my less conscious mind, to shine a light on my shadows and transform my consciousness in everyday life. The dream already knew the answer, it was just waiting for me to ask!

My house-to-apartment dream also points to a common confusion in working with affirmations: we can already have the surface thing we want to affirm while failing to address the underlying reasons why we pursued (or continue to pursue) that thing in the first place. Look no further than Hollywood so see evidence of this. The lifestyles of the rich and famous are often opulent and excessive beyond reason, yet those who are insecure in their experience of wealth always hunger for more. They are tapped into the surface level experience of “abundance” while ignoring a gnawing inner hunger for emotional security, love, or authentic relationship.

This is not to say that someone who has material wealth is lacking in these deeper areas, any more than it is to say that someone who lacks material wealth is lacking in an inner sense of abundance. This is simply to say that IF the accumulation of material wealth is based on an inner lack of something deeper, then using an affirmation such as, “I live in abundance,” can again reinforce that inner lack, constantly reminding the subconscious mind that the abundance one seeks is just out of reach. Working with dreams will help clarify what really needs to be abundant (my dream said that appreciating what I have and bringing small luxuries into that is where I should direct my energy; there’s more to my dream, and the interpretation is individual to each dreamer!).

Occasionally, I will work with clients by bringing in symbols from their dreams and their secondary process into a practice like active imagination or yoga nidra, giving their subconscious a chance to “get dreamy” while awake and work with those symbols in an intentional way. There’s very little need to “do” something big with them. Acknowledging back to your subconscious that you hear its messages, that you’re listening and responding and willing to integrate this material, brings the process forward naturally and of its own accord.

Like a dance when the partners are so attuned that they seem to be moving as one body, you can move with your process and your dreams, acknowledging and affirming the artistry that wants to come forth. Affirmations become not a blunt instrument of forced conversion, but rather a tool of choreography designed for you as a unique dream-dancer to express the story you want to live.

I am a strong, smart, powerful woman. I co-create my own reality in collaboration with The Dreaming, and that reality is abundant, nurturing, and fun!