Affirmations
We all remember writing on the blackboard 15 times, “I will not chew gum in class.” That’s an affirmation. After school, I forgot about them.
I learned about them again when reading one of Scott Adams’ books: The Dilbert Future [included in The Dilbert Omnibus, published 2002 by Boxtree, an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd.]. The topic of affirmations comes at the end of the book and again in an appendix.
Affirmations work like this: You write out a short, positive statement 15 times on a piece of paper. This statement is something that you want to achieve, or you want to make happen.
You keep on repeating it. Every day, for a while, you write the affirmation. Myself, I don’t keep using paper. I end up writing the affirmation electronically, using my handwriting app. And it doesn’t have to be 15 times anymore; it can be fewer times.
Speaking for myself, affirmations work only for correcting something in me. I can’t use them to provoke something to happen outside of me. (I tried. I tried for a long time to make a simple thing happen that was outside my control, but it didn’t happen.) But I can stop a bad habit. I can get rid of a negative mindset.
This is a very valuable exercise. It has a big effect. It leads to a spiritual gain. Without affirmations, I don’t know how I would’ve handled some of the things I’ve handled.
I owe Scott Adams a debt of thanks for bringing affirmations back to my attention.
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Returning to Rudolf Steiner: He mentioned in a few places how important it is for spiritual students to have mind control. Mind control can be achieved, most simply, through affirmations.
