If you think affirmations are some esoteric practice you could never see yourself doing, we’ve got news for you; you’re already giving yourself affirmations all the time, only negative ones. "I’m not good enough", "I can’t do anything right", "This isn’t going to work", "I’m sick and tired of…": every one of them coming true. Why not give at least equal attention to positive statements that affirm those aspects and qualities of you and your life that you’d like to be so?

Some may argue that negative affirmations are a distortion of the truth, that "I’m not good enough", "I can’t do anything right", "This isn’t going to work", and "I’m sick and tired of…" are merely observations of what’s so. The truth, however, is that our thoughts create our futures, not our pasts. When we make any of the above statements, we are creating (or attracting) the next experience evidencing it. Our flippant statement isn’t so benign; it’s actually the substance of the chains keeping us bound.

Affirmations help us imagine the way we want things to be instead of imagining that we’re observing how they are. They’re particularly useful in their power to help still and focus an undisciplined mind used to thinking in old, familiar patterns, many of them harmful and constrictive. When we repeat an affirmation over and over, whether out loud or in our minds, we "drown out" the incessant inner dialogue playing out its tired old tapes, ad nauseum.

To find the best positive affirmations for you to use in your life, look to the negative affirmations you’ve already been telling yourself. Look at its opposite: the want behind the complaint. Then turn that into your affirmation.

Instead of saying, "I’m not good enough", try saying, "I am good enough; I deserve everything I want". Instead of, "I can’t do anything right," try, "I can do anything I put my mind to". Replace "This isn’t going to work", with , "Of course this will work". Change, "I’m sick and tired of..", to, "I have the absolute freedom and power to change how I respond to any situation in any moment"; that’s also the perfect replacement for: "This is how I am, this is how I’ve always been, I’ll never change".

"I’m too old for this", becomes "I’m only as old as I feel". "Nobody loves me", turns into, "I love myself and I am lovable, so of course the world is in love with me too".

The science behind affirmations is explained in the theory of autosuggestion: the phenomenon whereby a person’s thoughts and beliefs produce physical symptoms. A physical symptom can be in the body or in one’s surroundings, one’s life situations. The practice of autosuggestion is the act of training the unconscious mind through repetition to believe chosen beliefs thereby producing desired physical effects.

Autosuggestion is used in hypnosis as well as in advertising. It is happening already, whether you consciously direct it or not. Why not take the reigns of your own mental processes and, in so doing, the process of conscious and deliberate creation. In the ABC’s of this process, ‘A’ is for Affirmations.