Jana wrote:
As I think Diane pointed out, affirmations are a form of self-hypnosis or auto-suggestion. The more you say something positive to yourself, the more you begin to see things from a less critical,less negative, and ultimately more realistic perspective.
I see a problem here: being more realistic is not being less negative. It may be the opposite.
Distorted Thinking--You FEEL the way you THINK:
1. All-or-nothing thinking: You look at things in absolute, black-and-white categories. 2. Overgeneralization: You view a negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. 3. Mental filter: You dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives. 4. Discounting the positives: You insist that your accomplishments or positive qualities don't count. 5. Jumping to conclusions: You conclude things are bad without any definite evidence. (a) Mind reading: You assume that people are reacting negatively to you. (b) Fortune-telling: You predict that things will turn out badly. 6. Magnification or minimization: You blow things way out of proportion or you shrink their importance. 7. Emotional reasoning: You reason from how you feel "I feel like an idiot, so I must be one." 8. "Should" statements: You criticize yourself or other people with "shoulds," "shouldnt's," "musts," "oughts," and "have-to's." 9. Labeling: Instead of saying "I made a mistake," you tell yourself, "I'm a jerk," or "a loser." 10. Blame: You blame yourself for something you weren't entirely responsible for, or you blame other people and overlook ways that you contributed to a problem."
Hey, these are basically the principles RET follows. But they don't work with affirmations. They try to lead you to the conclusion that those beliefs above are irrational, rather than negative, and try to build no expectations, positive or negative. Also, remember that what you have which is negative should be worked on, and your thinking you're perfect might while you probably aren't may prevent you from solving those problems. BTW, thinking you're great is a new problem for you to work on.
bye,
Caio Rossi
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