The Power of Self-Talk: how to program yourself in three weeks (Study included).
You can program yourself in two ways, be reading the affirmation statements out loud for three weeks, two times a day or with your eyes closed using a hypnotherapetic programming. Both ways are great. The latter tends to program you a bit quicker, at least according to my own heuristic research, after working with clients for close to 20 years. However, both ways can be used at the same time to supplement each other. In this article, I want to talk about how and why programming works if you read your affirmations out loud for three weeks, twice a day.
A study was conducted on the power of positive self-talk at the University of Amsterdam, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Study participants were psychology students with low self-esteem, as indicated by receiving a score below the 20th percentile on a questionnaire. Half the participants formed the experimental group, each member of which wrote a positive essay about themselves that they turned into positive statements. They then read these statements aloud to themselves twice daily over a period of three weeks. The remainder of the participants formed the control group and were given neutral writing assignments and no assigned reading. At the final session, all participants conducted a self-evaluation using questionnaires. They also answered questions about their motivation at different points in the study.
Members of the experimental group showed greater improvements than the control group in measures of Social Inadequacy, General Inadequacy, Self-Esteem, and Self-Confidence. Moreover, within this group intrinsically motivated participants improved more than those participating merely to be rewarded for taking part in the study. Unexpectedly, men were found to improve from self-instruction more than women.
Self-instructive programming works because it helps one create new neurological connections in the brain. As an old saying goes, “neurons that fire together, wire together.” Constant repetition in your own voice is a form of re-parenting yourself to believe otherwise. You begin to excite yourself daily with a new way of thinking. Then, the feeling follows and so do the actions and a new behavior.
So, if you choose to work with affirmation statements, be sure to design about ten, make them in present tense and state them in positives. Download out 1001 Affirmations guide at HypnoCloud App for the list of affirmations and some techniques to better program yourself.
Here is a full study if you want to read it.
The Effects of Positive Self-Instruction: A Controlled Trial
Alfred Lange, Rene Richard, Aagje Gest, Marjan De Vries & Litanja Lodder
Cognitive Therapy and Research, Vol. 22, No.3, 1998, pp. 225-236
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.823.1209&rep=rep1&type=pdf