Transport for London Shows How Positive Affirmations Should Not Be Written

Transport for London recently launched a new campaign to encourage more considerate behaviour from passengers. However, it may actually be having the reverse effect because whoever created the campaign obviously does not understand how to create effective affirmations.

The campaign involves animated characters wearing T-shirts with messages that include:

*I won't drop litter.
*I won't play loud music.
*I won't shout on my mobile.
*I won't eat smelly food.

The problem with these messages is that the human mind does not process negatives. For instance, whatever you do next, do not think of a green balloon. Despite your best intentions the image of a green balloon will enter your mind.

Therefore, the affirmations which are being promoted to Londoners are encouraging the exact opposite of what this campaign is aiming to address.

On a more positive note the campaign does include at least one positive affirmation:

*I will offer that person my seat.

In goal setting it is not sufficient to state what you don't want. In fact, this is a major reason why many people do not achieve their goals. They are so busy focusing on what they don't want and that is what thy end up manifesting in their lives.

Affirmations work in the same way. Affirmations should state what you do want rather than what you don't want. So you could amend the message "I won't drop litter" to:

"I will place my litter in a bin."

It may seem basic and even common sense but this is obviously not common knowledge otherwise Transport for London would not have made such a glaring error. The amended message clearly states the correct behaviour for dealing with litter and the message could be further reinforced with an image of someone actually placing litter in a bin.

As for eating smelling food this is a subjective matter. What might be smelly and offensive to one person may be acceptable to another. For instance, I can't stand the smell of any fast food. To me, it just doesn't smell the way good food should.

Personally, I would simply ban eating on public transport. In most of the countries I've travelled to eating and drinking is not allowed on public transport and the result is a much cleaner and healthier environment.

The issue of loudness is also subjective. People have different hearing ranges. For instance, a passenger was once incredulous that I could hear his music, even although he was using headphones, over what I was playing via my headphones.

The trouble is that all headphones are not created equal and some do allow sound to leak. Also, many people play music via headphones too loudly for too long and it has adversely affected their hearing. The consequence is that they are no longer aware that they are playing music louder than they should.

However, there is a problem on public transport with people who simply play music via their mobile phones without using headphones. So maybe a message regarding playing of music could be:

"I will use headphones when playing music."

Still, this post is not meant to be a rant against Transport for London or indeed the state of public transport here in London. I wanted to highlight the importance of phrasing affirmations correctly so that they do have a positive rather than negative effect.

I also wanted to highlight the fact that we are continually being fed messages by the media - billboards, posters, magazines, newspapers, TV, radio…and that many of them do not serve us. What's more worrying is that many people are simply not aware of the damaging effect these negative messages have on us.

Therefore, it is important to compensate for this by actively giving your mind a rich diet of positive messages and affirmations.

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Individuals such as the motivational speaker, Anthony Robbins, and world-renowned golfer, Tiger Woods, use positive affirmations to help them achieve success. However, from this article you can see how easy it is to get the process of writing affirmations wrong. So learn from an expert and start putting to use this powerful tool today to achieve phenomenal success in your life.

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Positive Thinking - Does it Work?

Does positive thinking work?

Let's consider the antithesis to this question.

Does negative thinking work?

Well, has there been a time when you have worried unduly about something? Maybe you were worried about an exam, a driving test, an interview. Chances are that your worst expectations came into fruition and even if you got the outcome you desired you recognised that you could have performed better had you not worried.

When we worry or have negative thoughts about something we are not allowing ourselves to think constructively about how to achieve what we want. We focus all our energy on the negative elements of a particular situation and what we put energy into grows.

Dr. Kathleen Hall writes in her book A Life in Balance,

"Affirmations are positive statements we tell ourselves. Our mind believes what we tell it. When you tell your brain positive information, you are feeding your brain extremely valuable food that heals your mind and body...When you tell yourself something over and over again, it gets recorded in your brain; then your mind and body believe it and you become what you have been telling yourself. A positive affirmation is a self-fulfilling prophecy."

This statement represents half of the picture because when we tell our brain, meaning our sub-conscious mind, negative information, when we repeatedly tell ourselves something which is negative it also gets recorded in the mind as if it were a true statement.

"A negative assertion is a self-fulfilling prophecy."

I was chatting to an acquaintance the other day. I could see she was tense and she was complaining of having headaches. I asked if she was worried about anything and she admitted that she was worried about a new job assignment. Now she wasn't worried about her ability to handle the assignment; she was worrying because she had this type of assignment before and didn't enjoy it. She was worrying herself sick and for no good reason.

"When you send your brain negative information, you are feeding your brain anti-nutrients that harm your mind and body."

Take getting a promotion at work. If we focus on why it's not possible to get the promotion and focus on our limitations then that's what we'll put our energy into. The presentation and or interview will roll around, we'll perform poorly, lose the opportunity and tell ourselves, "See, I knew I wasn't good enough!" "I knew I wouldn't get the promotion." We may even blame someone else – "The boss doesn't like me." "Bob is more experienced than I. He was bound to get the position."

When we have these thoughts we give up our power to influence change in our lives. When we accept that we create our reality then we can choose our reality. We can become more aware players in this game called life.

So if negative thinking works then, by the Law of Polarity, the opposite must also true. As Larry King said in his introduction to a special edition of Larry King Live aired recently called The Power of Positive Thinking where he interviewed Bob Proctor, John Assaraf, Michael Beckwith, John DeMartini and JZ Knight,

"Positive thoughts can transform, can attract the good things you know you want."

However, holding on to positive thoughts is challenging. When we are born we are encoded with the genetic material of our parents and, it has been proven, with the genetic material of our ancestors – that's a lot of hardwiring. We then grow up in an environment where the values of our parents and or guardians are also engrained into us whether it is 'information' that serves us in a negative or positive manner. Hence there is a lot of stuff to override. As Jack Canfield, puts it,

"We are a bundle of conditioned reflexes out of control."

We tend to put a lot of emotion into our negative thoughts compared to the emotion and energy we put into our positive thoughts. I can have a negative thought and if I don't invest too much emotion into it then I generally don't have to worry about it taking hold and manifesting itself. Unfortunately, we often invest a lot of energy and emotion into our negative thoughts and this simply serves to bring our worse fears into fruition even faster.

Conversely, when we say positive affirmations there can be an emotional detachment and a lack of consistency in saying them. Also, a lack of evidence in our visible world may cause our analytical conscious mind to filter and delete positive affirmations. Yet, if we are able to overcome this challenge and hold the thought in our mind of what we really want irrespective of our current circumstances then our outer world will eventually catch up with our inner world.

To demonstrate the power of positive thinking I'd like to go back to the 2006 Winter Olympics held in Turin, Italy. The men's Alpine skiing downhill race was won by three times French champion, Antoine Dénériaz. Dénériaz says,

"…since time that I said myself, "One day you will be World Champion, Olympic Champion…"

But Dénériaz was not expected to win. He had performed no better than sixth in a World Cup race this season. The commentators and many of the other competitors all talked about how tough the course was. The course also was getting progressively more demanding as the day wore on and more and more runs were completed.

Dénériaz was also the last of 30 seeded skiers. None of this deterred Dénériaz. He knew he had a job to complete plus there was champagne waiting for him to drink.

You see Dénériaz had been applying the power of positive thinking to the extent he was so confident he was going to win and beocme Olympic Champion he bought champagne to celebrate beforehand!

Dénériaz skied beautifully and won emphatically in a time of 1:48.80 stealing what had, until that point, looked like a sure gold medal, from Michael Walchhofer from Austria (1:49.52). Bruno Kernen of Switzerland was third with a time of 1:49.82.

The top US skier, Bode Miller, said in an interview afterwards,

"The way Dénériaz skied today, he was pretty much untouchable."

That positive thinking works can be proven scientifically. You undoubtedly will have heard of The Science of Getting Rich and The Science of Being Well. It bears well to remember that the Law of Attraction works both ways. Positive thinking is "The Science of Getting What You Want".

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