Express your vision as an affirmation

In my Professionally Speaking Toastmasters club, a guest highly recommended a book, The Science of Getting Rich, by Wallace Wattles. The book was written back in 1910, and is the progenitor of a long series of more famous books, such as Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and a recent best seller, The Secret. I had read many of its offspring, but had never heard of the original.

I searched for it on google and found it available for free download as a .pdf at http://www.xtrememind.com/science.pdf. I downloaded it and started reading it right away. It’s a quick read; I had finished it by the time I went to bed that evening.

I’m writing about it because I heartily recommend it to everyone, but also because it and its progeny have a special connection to the self motivation model. Here is the model:

MOTIVATION = ƒ (VISION, SUCCESSABILITY, ENVIRONMENT).

This means that your motivation is related to your vision, the change you want to make in your life, your successability (How confident are you in your competence, your ability to make the change?) and your environment, both your physical environment (where you will do the work necessary to make the change) and your social environment (the people and organizations available to you).

These books explain the power of affirmations and the characteristics of a good affirmation. The link these books have to the self motivation model is that when you write down your vision, that change you want to make in your life, you should write it as an affirmation to take advantage of an affirmation’s power. The power of affirmations are well known:

1. They help you focus on what you desire.
2. They reprogram your unconscious mind and open you up to powerful belief in yourself.
3. What you focus on, you will achieve.

How do you write a good affirmation? These books explain this as well. These are characteristics of a successful affirmation:

1. It is focused or targeted on you; use the word ‘I”.
2. It is stated in the positive, not the negative – focus on what you want, not what you don’t want.
3. It is stated in the present tense, as if the change has already occurred.
4. It is clear and specific.

So write your vision, that change you want to make in your life, as an affirmation. When you write your vision as an affirmation, you not only get the motivational power inherent in having a worthwhile pursuit, but you also get the life changing power from the affirmation.

We call this leveraging your vision!