Peter Szabo explains why many people find affirmations ineffective and shows how to make them work. He argues that affirmations must be enacted as vivid, emotionally felt "synthetic experiences" that create conditioning in the nervous system, and that unresolved past memories contradicting the affirmation must be rewritten (memory-flipping) for affirmations to take hold. He also recommends combining memory work with repeated, emotionally intense visualization and removing self-sabotaging behaviors to maximize gains.
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So you might have heard about affirmations, but a lot of people say they don't work. And here's some of the big mistakes I see people do with them. My name is Peter Szabo, and affirmations have been one of the tools that got me to where I'm today. And a big mistake people make is they just say something. I'm happy, I'm happy. I'm rich. I'm rich. But that really doesn't work that way. How you make an affirmation really, truly work is it becomes a synthetic experience. What I mean by that is when you envision something very vividly and you really feel it in your body, your nervous system, your brain literally cannot tell the difference from it being a real event or an imagined event. So when you just say something, it's like, you know, you say something, but it doesn't communicate to your unconscious, to your body. But when you say an affirmation and you really envision it, and you really step into the picture, see yourself doing the thing, and really feel it in the moment, you. You're literally creating, like, a synthetic experience, synthetic memory that the body is producing the same chemicals, neurotransmitters, as if it was really happening. So now you're conditioning the body to really believe it. So you keep doing it again and again, and you start shifting, you start becoming a new person, therefore start getting new results, right? So if you, for example, say that I am relentless. I take heroic action today, and I get stuff done like crazy. I feel amazing and. And, you know, proud of my accomplishment. And you keep saying that, and you really envision it, feel it, you keep doing that. And with a little bit of repetition, which is one of the keys to make it work, the frequency, the repetition, and to the emotional intensity, like really feeling it real. Now, with that, you're gonna start to shift and program yourself to actually become a person like that who is relentless, who works hard, who puts in the work and doesn't procrastinate. Now, that's one of the biggest keys to it, or maybe the two big keys. But the biggest mistake I see people make is not realizing that this work is helpful. But oftentimes it doesn't really work if there's some evidence in your past and memory that contradicts it, right? So you may be saying all these affirmations that I work hard or whatever, but if you have memories in your past that prove otherwise, then you're just really creating internal conflict. And a lot of these affirmations may not even Feel right. You may even experience like a tension in your body or just feels weird. It doesn't feel true. And maybe that's because, you know, in the past you had a memory that the meaning behind it was that you're lazy or a couch potato. And now, you know, these two things are kind of clashing. You know, one of them says that you're a hard working person, one of it says that you're not. And, and the affirmations will help, of course, assuming you do them right. But until you really go back to the past and rewrite this memory that's preventing it from working, it's kind of like an uphill battle. If you can go back to the source of that belief, of that problem and flip that memory, right? So take that memory where you felt really hurt because someone told you you're lazy or whatever happened, and now you flip it to the opposite. Someone praising you that you wear, you know, hard working, you got a great result, you know, that'll automatically change it. The way I look at it is you can usually get the biggest gains by elimination. You know, when people want to, you know, make more money or lose more weight, they think about things they can do or add, you know, what's the new diet pill I need to get, or what's the new diet plan I have to do, what's the new foods I have to eat. But actually, oftentimes you get more benefit, you get more, more gain, more progress by simply stopping to do the stupid things. Meaning, you know, if you keep eating the chocolate cake, if you just stop eating that, you're going to get more gain by, you know, rather than by adding, you know, asparagus or whatever. Right? Same thing. When it comes to affirmations, it's something that you add in trying to reprogram yourself and it's helpful, but you actually get more gain. You get more progress by going back to the past and just simply getting rid of the thing that caused the problem in the first place. It's kind of like, you know, take like a part of your body, like your palm, and let's say you keep burning it every day. Affirmations is kind of like applying balm to it. You know, it helps it heal, it's nice and everything, but you keep burning it every day because the memory still exists in your unconscious. That confirms that, proves that you are lazy. And if you just flip the memory that's causing the burn every single day, when the burn's gone, you're automatically going to heal. Combine it with the affirmations do both of them, the memory flipping and the affirmations. That's how you get the best results because, number one, you stop burning yourself and then you apply the healing balm and you'll be good to go. So I hope this was helpful and see you in the next one.
