The brain and mind have tremendous power and when it comes to creating healthier habits in life there is one key tool you can use to help you get started on your journey.
This tool has been proven to really help people create better habits in their lives.
Before I share with you what that 1 tool is, let me give you a bit of a background.
We are all humans here and although our culture, language, and belief system may be different from one another there is something we cannot deny we ALL have in common, and that is our brain.
We all have brains and the brain has this thinking machine commonly known as the mind.
Turns out that this machine runs 90% on auto-pilot. This means that we are running most of our daily lives from our subconscious.
What do I mean by the auto-pilot? The mind has 2 modes in which it runs or operates. The subconscious mind and the conscious mind.
Imagine an iceberg, the conscious mind is the part of the iceberg we see above the water while the subconscious mind is the part of the iceberg that is below the water surface.
The conscious mind is everything we are aware of, it is truly our awareness. The subconscious mind is that which runs in the background.
A perfect way to demonstrate this is by mundane daily activities like chewing our food. We learned early on in our lives that we need to chew our food in order to swallow it easily. This behavior and knowledge was stored in the subconscious mind, as we really don’t need to think about it much as we grew older.
Another example I love to share is the following: imagine yourself driving to the supermarket. Your mind is going through the list of things to need to get when you arrive and is so intensely focused on that thought that you make it to the supermarket from your home and you really don’t remember every detail of your drive.
Again, we are living approximately 90% in our subconscious mind and 10% in our conscious mind.
Now that you understand how our minds work I can share with you the tool that is going to help you achieve your wellness goal and create new habits.
This tool is called AFFIRMATIONS.
Yup, affirmations is the #1 tool that is going to help you achieve your goals.
Why? Because when you practice affirmations you do so from the conscious mind and with them you start to create new thought pathways that can later on, with practice, become part of your subconscious. Research has shown how positive affirmations increase certain neural pathways activities (as seen on MRIs) that enable you to create a better “self” relationship.
When you use affirmations, you are retraining your brain, and since you are doing this from your conscious mind, you want to train your brain with the best thoughts possible to get you to your goal.
Here is a simple example on how we can use affirmations to help us create better habits. Let’s say you want to drink more water throughout the day.
Your affirmation can be:
I drink plenty of water in the day to keep my body hydrated.
Repeat this affirmation in the morning when you wake up. Because you are working on the conscious mind, you go and grab a glass of water and drink it soon after waking up.
You may also prepare yourself and grab a reusable bottle and fill it up with water and bring it with you in the car as you head out of your house.
Do this a few times and you start creating a better habit of drinking plenty of water throughout your day.
I know what you are thinking: But Lennis, what if I forget to do it? The affirmations won’t help me if I don’t remember.
This is when you make a plan to set yourself up for success. Take a post-it note and stick it on your car keys that reminds you of the bottle of water. Put a reminder on your phone to let you know every hour or so to grab more water.
By seeing this affirmation everywhere your brain will start to accept it as a new truth.
Little by little you create new habits in the subconscious mind that leads you to achieve those health and wellness goals.
Affirmations are now part of my daily routine. I LOVE using them every day to help me get closer and closer to my goals and to create healthier habits.
If you would like a cheat sheet with different health and wellness oriented affirmations, click here to download it.
Again, remember that affirmations can be used to retrain your brain, they will only work on your mind if you create the consistency of repeating them to yourself every single day.
Want more info?
Check out this video with more examples and ideas on how to use affirmations.
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