What Works: Affirmations are fluff if you don’t believe them

I was working with a client today who had a concern about her confidence. “Everyone has a degree and I don’t,” she said. She mentioned her lack of degree had held her back from meeting new business contacts. Sometimes, she felt like running away when a conversation turned academic. Occasionally, she did by ending the conversation.

I asked her why this mattered to her. She said she didn’t feel like she was enough for these people. Although she’s a perfectly capable business woman with a lot of life experience and great intuition, a conversation with someone who valued education created a lot of fear. But she had tried affirmations.

“What is your affirmation?” I asked.

“I am enough.” She answered.

I asked if she believed that and her answer was no. She didn’t believe that she was enough for academic types. She would rather just end conversations with them because she would never be enough. So, no. She didn’t believe in her affirmation.

Canned affirmations don’t work if you don’t believe in them.

It may be an unpopular opinion. But I believe that “fake it til you make it” can be dangerous if you don’t believe in what you are trying to fake. In fact, you don’t have to fake it at all if, as your core, you ARE IT.

We worked out a better affirmation.

“What do you believe in?” I questioned.

She said she believed in the validity of her life experience. She had helped many people and she had results with her work.

She also believed in her intuition. She believed in her ability to help people based on what she felt about them.

I considered she build an affirmation around that.

I call this a confidence statement. It’s more than an affirmation. It points to the areas where you feel competent.

Competence creates confidence. By coming at conversations from this area of competence, she created the competence that this was enough.

Then, even though she was enough to begin with, she can start believing it.

What affirmations are you using that you don’t necessarily believe? How can those be shifted to leverage your competence and create something you DO believe?

We will be creating believable affirmations in my Annual Visions and Intentions vision board class on Friday, January 19 at The Studio at Adams Hub for Innovation.

It starts at 5:30 pm and ends at 8:30 pm. There are very few seats available. If you can’t make it, everyone who buys a seat will get a narrated course on how to do the full process. This includes creating affirmations that serve you better than the cookie cutter options. You can get your ticket here - http://bit.ly/visionsandintentions

What Works Coaching
Diane Dye Hansen is the Chief Inspiration Officer of What Works Coaching, an individual and organizational coaching and consulting firm based in Carson City, Nevada. She has 20 years of experience working with top corporations, growing businesses, motivated entrepreneurs, and individuals hungry for a fresh start. She is also the creator of DOCS Theory, also known as The Theory of CrappertunityTM, a mindset and change theory which defines the moment crisis creates more opportunity than would have existed without the crisis.

Diane holds a Bachelor’s in Business Administration and Marketing from Cal State San Bernardino and a Masters in Communication Management from the University of Southern California. She is also the Chief Executive Officer of What Works Recruitment, a company which specializes in filling hard-to-fill positions and fitting talent with culture. Her column appears every Monday, and sometimes Tuesday, in Carson Now.