Why affirmations don't work

Many people assert that affirmations are an effective way to change your reality. The idea is that you repeat some mantra, like “I am wealthy” as an incantation to become wealthy. There are several good reasons why affirming things like that doesn't work.

One of the reasons affirmations don't work is this: Asserting something that is not actually true in your subconscious will natuarally cause another thought to arise; i.e. the truth that “I am not wealthy”.

It works if you assert "the sky is blue" because there is no conflict: Assertion and experience align.

So you have two ideas in your conscious mind: “I am wealthy” and “I am not wealthy”. They tussle for dominance and guess which side generally wins? The truth... The idea, of course is to amplify, or hang onto, the part you want, and to repress or try to ignore the part you don't want. The harder you desire something, the harder it's opposite asserts itself in your conscious mind, and the harder you have to work to bury it. Your subconscious doesn't do “ignore”.

Have you heard the expression “What you resist, persists” ?

There is no getting away from these polarities, these dualities, so long as you are using your conscious mind. Ken Wilber has written many books on the subject. Hindu sages have known and described this for millenia - see advaita. The function of the conscious mind is to organise and classify your perceptions, and one of the minds tools - duality - is to set up a distinction between “this” (wealthy) and “that” (not wealthy). There is an imaginary barrier that separates the idea of wealthy from the idea of not-wealthy. Interestingly, the universe as such does not contain such barriers, and neither does the subconscious.

Thus the state of enlightenment transcends all dualities and recognises no barriers.

If you want to do a little experiment, make a list of your positive behaviours down one side of a piece of paper. Now think about each item, and in total self-honesty, write down how you express these behaviours if you are tired, unwell or stressed. The pairs of behaviours are called polarities. They have kept psychologists employed for decades.

Gestalt psychotherapy uses a theory, called the “Paradoxical Theory of Change”. The Paradoxical Theory of Change basically states that in order to change some condition in yourself, firstly you must fully embrace what you are, right here and now. You can read the theory here. Once you experience what you are being, paradoxically you allow change to occur. Simply by not resisting what you are, you can become different.
Conversely, by continuing to resist, you stay just where you are.

So there is actually well researched psychology behind the saying “What you resist, persists”

You can see that the conscious mind in effect sabotages affirmations for at least 2 good reasons.

There is a way out of this dilemma, which involves bypassing the conscious mind and speaking directly to the subconscious mind. It's called hypnosis. The subconscious mind does not operate in a dualistic framework. In the state of trance, under hypnosis, an assertion like “wealthy” does not get evaluated through this dualistic mechanism. It is planted, like a seed and begins to grow.