The Beginners Guide to Affirmations and Visualisation.

Affirmations and visualisation are sometimes seen as the tools of those self help junkies who meditate at dawn and don't wear deodorant - not really used everyone in daily lives.

Affirmations are positive statements which we repeat and write down in order to give the thinking patterns a more positive slant.

So how can repeating a phrase, and one you don't really believe at that, change your outlook?

We are drawn to what we think about most (or the things we think about most are attracted to us!). If you constantly expect events in your life to go wrong, people to respond badly to you or to make mistakes, then guess what will happen?

If you are always thinking about how good your life is, how lucky you are to have good relationships and how you do your best at everything, then what do you think the outcome is?!

Our brains work very much on visual pictures. Do not think of a monkey eating a big yellow banana. What is in you head now?! We cannot choose NOT to think about something....but we CAN choose what thoughts occupy our thoughts the majority of the time. And affirmations can change the visual pictures in our heads.

Your brain doesn't pick up on words like not and don't, so when making affirmations ensure they are positive. For example saying 'I'm not fat' brings an image of fatness to mind so this is what you move towards. Saying 'I have a slim, healthy body' moves you towards this image.

Changing your thought patterns will not be an overnight occurrence if your internal voice has been negative for a long time. But positive affirmations are one method to help turn your thoughts around. And different thoughts give us different outcomes.

Identify your most persistent negative thoughts such as 'I am fat and hate the way I look'. Find a positive alternative such as 'I eat healthily, I am losing weight and I love the body I have'. Write out your positive affirmations , say them to yourself in the mirror, stick them up around your home, car, workplace etc.

Your affirmations should be believable. Repeating 'I am thin', if you have 200lb to lose won't ring true in your own head so is less effective. 'I am eating healthily and losing weight' is true, realistic and your brain incorporates it much more easily.

Did you have to write lines when you were naughty at school? Well write affirmations like that, and ensure they focus on what you want, not what you don't want. Teachers ordering pupils to write out 'I must not be naughty' 100 times were on the wrong track!

Taking some quiet time to visualise the positive scenarios will speed up the process of change. Keeping with the weight loss example, you might visualise yourself looking slender, playing sport, easily doing up those size 10 jeans. You could see yourself enjoying healthy food, feeling good about yourself and being full of energy.

Make the scenes in your head vibrant, colourful and real. Experience all the feelings associated with the visualisations, what would you taste, smell, touch? How would you feel emotionally?

You may need to visualise several times before reaching this point but persevere. It will get easier and easier to see this slim healthy you and you will naturally start to move towards this vision.

You could record yourself talking through a positive visualisation and listen to this regularly, or there are many guided visualisation recordings available for various different topics from weight loss to wealth creation.

If negative thinking habits have developed over years, a couple of weeks of saying affirmations won't change you completely - but you will start to see a shift in your thinking. And that is just the beginning, the changes in you life could be phenomenal!