Affirmations, visualizations and the subconscious mind.

March 20, 2006 5:02 AM

Questions on affirmations, visualizations and the subconscious mind.

Various motivational and self-help books I've read all suggest the benefits of affirmations and visualizations to "program" our subconscious mind to achieve the results we want.

It's worked for me on varying degrees, but nothing really substantial that I could strongly credit to it being a reliable, working solution.

I'd like to hear if anyone here practises these mind affirmations / visualizations? What techniques do you employ, and what have you experienced so far?

posted by arrowhead to Science & Nature (4 answers total)

I've played around with visualizations to see if they worked for me. My little test was a toy basketball set, where I'd shoot free throws. What I found in my not very scientific analysis was that for *me*, there's a zone of "pure confidence" that if I get it just right, the shot goes in. Oh, a precursor to this I think is that you've practiced sufficiently that (for physical events) there is a muscle memory. What seems to happen with me, is that when I get that image of pure confidence, where I feel relaxed and that there is no question that I will make the shot, I just have to do what I always do to make it, that my success increases pretty significantly.
I also find that there's a couple other things that seem kind of related to visualizations. The first is I know instantly after I shoot whether the ball is going to make it or not (I attribute that to muscle memory). The second is that if I feel that the ball should go in and it doesn't, my immediate reaction is to blame some external factor, since *I* couldn't have missed.
Anyway, none of this was really that rigorous, just me seeing if I could convince myself whether visualizations work with me (I concluded yes).
posted by forforf at 6:58 AM on March 20, 2006

Have you read Psycho Cybernetics? Many people (myself included) have had great results with it. (The audio program is excellent as well.)
posted by blahtsk at 7:08 AM on March 20, 2006

You can see my response in this thread. I did notice a tangible result; for example, to fight depression I was doing the very simple affirmation "I am a happy person". I felt better during the weeks I was doing the affirmation, and when I start to get glum, doing it for a couple of days helps me pull out rather than get worse.
posted by Rubber Soul at 12:04 PM on March 20, 2006

Response by poster: Thank you guys! They're all great responses.

blahtsk - Fyi, I went out and got Psycho Cybernetics the very last night itself at a local bookstore. We'll see how that turns out when I read it :-)
posted by arrowhead at 2:00 AM on March 22, 2006