The 4 Ultimate Steps for Affirmations That Work Perfectly

If you’ve ever wondered why affirmations never seem to actually do anything for you, this episode is going to give you the answer you’ve been looking for. Not the sugar-coated version, not the recycled advice from Pinterest but the real reason your affirmations fall flat, and the piece no one ever talks about that makes all the difference.

This episode breaks affirmations down in a way that finally makes sense in the real world. You’ll get the clarity you need to understand why your affirmations don’t stick… and what needs to shift so they actually start working for you every single day.

If you’re tired of wasting time on affirmations that do nothing, this is the episode to listen to.

And if you want help creating an affirmation that actually matches what your mind responds to, the free Affirmation Generator to get started.

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Generic Affirmations Fail
• 2:10 Desires Vs Beliefs Explained
• 4:30 Money Myths And Nervous System Pushback
• 7:30 The Real Job Of Affirmations
• 9:35 Four-Step Framework Overview
• 12:15 Step 1: Radical Clarity
• 14:10 Step 2: Find The Block
• 17:15 Step 3: Craft The New Belief
• 20:10 Step 4: Embodiment In Practice
• 23:00 Neural Pathways And Lasting Change

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey, love, and welcome back. I am so glad you're here. If you are new, I am Shannon, and this space is all about manifesting from the inside out. So we don't force or pretend and we definitely do not skip the deep stuff. The conversations here that we have are to help you live the life that your soul already knows is yours. And today we're gonna talk about something that you have probably tried a hundred times or maybe you heard about and you were like, oh hell yeah, that seems easy. I'm gonna do that. And you felt really hopeful about it. But then you wondered why the hell it didn't do a damn thing. And that's affirmations, because we've been sold this idea that repeating a sentence over and over again is gonna magically change our lives, saying things like, I'm rich and I'm confident, I attract everything I want. It's cute, but let's be honest, and that's the fact that most affirmations don't work. And it's not because you're doing them wrong. It is because you were never taught how they actually work in your brain. And that's what we talk about here. We don't talk about all the sparkly stuff that's just say the affirmation and do the vision board, but we really dig into how to make it work so that what you're saying, what you're affirming, what you want can actually manifest or show up in your reality so you can live it every single day. See, you were told to affirm your desire. When the real transformation happens, when you affirm the belief that allows the desire to come through. And that's what I'm gonna walk you through today. Why your affirmations haven't been landing, and I'm gonna give you a sneak peek into four steps that finally make them click. Four steps that turn affirmations into something that actually rewires your mindset instead of making you repeat and hope. Because when you rewire your mindset, then whatever's happening inside of you has no choice but to happen outside of you. That's all manifestation is your inner world being reflected in your outer world. So I want you to grab your favorite drink, cozy up, and let's get started. And please cozy up today because where I'm sitting at, it is cold AF, friends. Very cold. I'm freezing. Um, so maybe your drink this week is gonna be a nice warm drink, uh, nice hot tea or a hot coffee as we go through this. So the first thing we want to dig into is why our affirmations aren't working. We got to understand what's happening, what's going wrong, and then learn what's going right so we can make them work for us. That's the whole point. We want those phrases to work. If your affirmations ever felt forced, if they ever felt fake, if they ever felt like you were lying to yourself, there is a reason for that. How many times have you said, I'm rich, and you're like, girl, you're a liar. You are not rich. Why are you saying you're rich? And that's because you've been using your affirmations to talk to your desires and not your beliefs. Because this is really what no one teaches when they're throwing out, say this affirmation on the new full moon or whatever the hell they say, is that your affirmations don't manifest from your desires. Your affirmations recondition your beliefs, and that's what manifests your desires. So your limiting beliefs are gatekeepers. Limiting beliefs are just beliefs that no longer serve you. You may be like Shannon, some beliefs I have ain't never served me, but they did keep you safe, whether you liked them or not. But they're just not serving you anymore. You're ready to move past them to get what you want. So they're the gatekeepers, right? Limiting beliefs are the gatekeepers. They're that bridge between where you are and where you want to be. So when you try to affirm a desire without shifting the belief underneath it, your body pushes back. So let's go back to this affirmation of I'm rich, right? Let's say that desire is money. You want more money flowing in your life. And y'all, there ain't nothing wrong with wanting more money to flow in your life. And honestly, I was talking to somebody and they're like, I don't want a lot of money. I just want a just enough to. Can we get rid of the just enough to? Girl, have the money. Just be honest and real. Want the money. Money allows you to engage in hobbies. Money allows you to engage in new experiences. It's just a currency for us to trade for what we want basically these days. Instead of saying, like, oh, you know, I have this pack of gum. Let me trade that to you because you want gum, you know, and I want, you know, the post-it note holder. Let's trade to get what I want. Like, we just use money for that instead now. Okay. So stop limiting yourself or thinking like you don't want to be greedy. No, you just want all of the money to have all of the life that you want. Money is just a currency. You see how we've been built in some limiting beliefs there already. So anyway, I digress. I just wanted to put that out there, but let's say your desire is more money. So you affirm, I'm rich, but deep down for you, rich equals more work, more pressure, more responsibility, more exhaustion. So maybe that's why we say, Oh, I just want enough. Because maybe you associate rich, the true money overflow you want, with that work and that pressure, the responsibility, the exhaustion. And you're already tired and you already feel stretched thin. And your nervous system hears rich and it thinks, yeah, hell no, that sounds unsafe. We talked all about our nervous system on this on the last series that we did, the episodes right before this, if you want to check that out. So your body resists that affirmation. Not because the desire is impossible, but because the belief attached to it is threatening. The belief attached to the rich feels unsustainable. There's some fear there. It just doesn't feel good to the body. And so that's why your affirmations don't work for you. Not because you're lacking some sort of discipline or you're not, you know, catching your thoughts or you're not saying it enough, but because the affirmation itself is targeting the wrong thing. It's targeting the desire. And your desire has never been the issue. So if that's more money or more peace, deeper relationships, freedom, or confidence, your desires are clean. Okay. They're neutral. They are pure. They're not the issue. The resistance happens in the belief that's around the desire. Money isn't scary. What you were taught about money might be scary. Love isn't dangerous, but what you've experienced around love may have been dangerous. Confidence is not unreachable. What your past conditioned you to believe about yourself might be. Affirmations don't override your desire. They help you to override the belief that blocks the desire. So you're not just affirming what you want. Girl, you know what you want. You ain't gotta affirm what you want. You already know that. You have to affirm to create a new belief to get whatever is keeping you from your desire out of the way. That's the whole game. And that is also why these generic affirmations fall flat. Because they're not personal. It's not a sign that you're doing affirmations wrong. You've just been seen and shown on socials and floating around on the internet. The think happy thoughts things, like you always have happy thoughts, or to uh say this specific statement at this specific time. That's not how our brain works. That's not how manifesting works. You don't like reveal or create things in your life by trying to game the system or hack the system. Whatever's in your brain is what shows up in this outside world. What you believe is what you experience. So we have to change the belief. And that's why we use these four steps in Manifest Shi so that we can have the reality that we want. The first one is clarity. You gotta be clear about what you want. Not about the pretty vision board, but about what you actually want and why. Once again, if you want the money, say you want the money. Just be really clear with your desire. Because that's gonna be the only way that you can determine what is standing in between you and it is that clarity. So find the clarity of your desire. Honesty, honesty, honesty. I'll say that all the time. Be honest. If you want to find the best clarity, just be honest with yourself. Second is to discover what is getting in the way. What is the resistance? What is stopping that? What makes it to where where you are now doesn't believe you can have what you want? What's stopping that? And maybe it's you don't have time or you can't handle more or good things don't last. I work with a client all the time and she just she's really worked hard to get over that mindset of good things don't last. For me, for a very long time, success meant stress. And I think it's still residually there, something that I work on because, you know, I really came through the working world, the business type world of like the hustle and grind, and you always have to be on to be successful. And if you stop for one freaking day, it's all gonna fall down. Ooh, that's stressful. Who the hell wants to live like that? Not me, but that was kind of the cultural thing that I grew up in, right? Like everybody had seven side hustles and all that stuff. So we have to see what's standing in between so that the affirmation that you choose is built to override the block. Once you figure out what the block is, right? Now you get your clarity, you figured out your block. Now you create that new belief or that affirmation. This is where the affirmation comes in. I know what I want, I know it's getting in the way. Now I gotta reframe what's getting in the way to bridge to my desire. I need to build a bridge to my desire with a new belief, not a fantasy version, not the say it till you believe it version, but the belief that's going to shift your system towards what you want without triggers or without panicking. Remember that nervous system. We got to keep that in mind. So we're gonna create this new belief. It's a reframe. Not of your desire. Once again, can I not stress this enough today? I just want to stress this over and over and over again. We're not saying what we want. We already know what we want. We're not gonna just sit there and tell ourselves what we want over and over and over again. Okay. We we know what we want. That's the clarity. Now we know what's getting in the way of what we want. That's the old limiting belief. So now we have to create a new belief to override the belief that no longer serves us. That is the affirmation. It's the new belief that's going to carry you to the desire that you want. So that's where we're we're at today. That's what I want you to take today, more than anything, is this what affirmations actually do work. The affirmations that work are the beliefs you're trying to build. Not the speaking to the desire, but to overriding the block. And then you take that, okay, great. Now I know what the new belief needs to be so that I can create what I want. And you embody it. And to be honest, a lot of people start here in embodiment when it comes to what we learn about manifestation and mindset and creating our ideal life. Like a lot of people start here and they are lumping affirmations into like embodiment, where I say this, I say this because that's my thoughts, and I say it, and it's a tool. Okay. But affirmations, the ones that we create to build the bridge, the ones that work, are what determine the embodiment. So you have to do the previous three steps so you know where you're trying to go. And this is what the manifesting space calls acting as if being your delusional self. All these little catchphrases that sound really fun, but it's it's just embodying, it's building belief. That's what it is. It's building belief. So you feel like acting as if and being delusional, and all of those things sound a little too woo or whatever, or what does that even mean? It means I'm building a new belief, something I believe in, and I do it with my thoughts, emotions, and actions. I solidify that belief with my thoughts, emotions, and actions, the belief that I want. This is what activates new neural pathways to take you to your desire. Because what? Say it with me, class. Let me be your teacher today. Whatever I believe is what I experience. So we just want to change our beliefs. Well, how do we do that? Through our neuropathways. Yep. Look, look at that. We're being all scientific today. Through our neuropathways. Because your brain changes, your beliefs are stored in your brain. And you have to change your brain. Your brain can change, and you do that by building new beliefs. Well, how do I build a new belief? How do I believe in something new through my thoughts, emotions, and actions? I want you to think back to a time in your life where you believed one thing, then you were presented with new information or new experiences, and it made you believe something completely different. That's exactly what you do when you manifest on purpose. You present yourself with new information in your thoughts, emotions, and actions. Based on that affirmation, that is the belief that you want to take you to the desire that you want to have. Because if I believe this, then it's a guarantee that I'm gonna have that. And you do the first three steps before you ever whip out a journal or meditate or paste anything onto a vision board. You have to get the direction of where you're trying to go. But most people just jump to a vision board or to meditation, and then there's confusion, and you wonder why it's not working, or you're saying the thing, but then there's no actions or emotions to go with what you're saying. Because it just sounded pretty to say this because they said to just say I'm rich. They said to just say I'm so lucky. Uh what belief are we building? What's getting in the way? You can say, Oh, I'm so lucky. But if you don't believe that, because in your brain it says, Girl, you ain't lucky. Remember X, Y, Z? You have to show it. How do you show it? That's how you make the affirmation. If you want that to be your desire. I don't believe in luck. I believe in purposely creating. No chance. That's what we do here in this space. We don't leave stuff up to chance. I mean, it's fun to say we're lucky. That is fun. And it's okay to have fun with it. But that's not the methodology, right, that we go through uh or the system. Like, like we want to make it predictable, reliable, repeatable. I don't know about you, but I prefer that over luck any day. So then that's how you do the embodiment phase, right? But today we're focusing on the affirmation phase because this is where so many of us get it wrong. Like I used to get it wrong, because I thought, well, that's just what you're supposed to do. And then I was like, duh, Shannon, that's not how our brain works. No, no, no. Our brain works by changing the belief. So once again, we're not just sitting here repeating what we want over and over again. Like, seriously, if it worked that way and you just said, I want a mansion, I want a mansion, I want a mansion, I want a mansion, I want a mansion. That sounds pretty. That sounds nice, but what do you actually have to believe? What do you have to believe to get that mansion? That's what you're trying to target with your affirmation. Not that you want the mansion, but what do you have to believe to live in that mansion of your dreams that has a lake and it has its own little forest in the back that you can run around through like it's the secret garden or something? Like, what do you have to believe to get there? That's the affirmations that you want to say. And your affirmations guide you, but you're not just saying your affirmations, you're embodying those affirmations through how you think, your emotions and how you feel, and your actions. So you might think that's a whole lot of steps for a simple statement. And I know you want to get to the juicy stuff, but the statement isn't just what you repeat. It is your guide. It is the guide to your desire. It is the guide to making that desire a part of your reality. It is the foundation of your manifesting practices that you engage in. It is the foundation of your meditations and your journaling and your vision boards. It takes the randomness out of it and it allows you once again to manifest on purpose repeatedly. So this week, I want you to practice the first three steps because I know in a sense it sounds easy. And then also in a sense, it's like, why are there so many damn steps? Why can't I just write something out? But I want you to practice the steps. And it can be done in like three minutes. Now, I'll tell you when I first got started, it was a little bit difficult for me. Like it was easy for me to kind of get that clarity and that, you know, I'm gonna tell you the truth because a lot of people struggle with clarity. That's a whole nother conversation. But once I found my clarity, sometimes it was hard for me to pinpoint the limit that was in my way. Like it took a little bit of time for me to kind of narrow it down and figure it out before creating my affirmation to create the new belief that would take me to my desire. But now it's so very much automatic. Like things pop in my brain that are limiting beliefs that if you told me years ago, like years ago, I would, I kind of would latch on to those basic limiting beliefs of like, oh, I have to work a lot to have money.

unknown: 17:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 17:18

People think like hard work pays off, right? Those kind of things. But now I can like the process is so fast because the more you practice something, the easier it becomes, the faster it becomes, and you can get to the real root of the limit that you have. Like we all have different limits. I tell the story all the time about like a limit that I realized I had going through this process was I always thought my brother and sister should out-earn me. So anytime I caught up to them with my income, like I would just stop. Like I totally freeze, like, oh no, I can't out-earn them. I can't keep going. I gotta wait. There's a long story why that is. It's silly now. To me, I think it's so silly, but it was a limiting belief that I had that got in the the way of me going forward in life. But I had to address it, that belief and change that belief. So it becomes more automatic and you get more precise and better with it. And then of course the manifestation is just flow, flow, flow. When you practice, so I want you to practice the first three steps. What do you want? What belief is keeping you from what you want? And then how do you reframe that to a new belief that's going to take you where you're trying to go to make your affirmation? Okay. And just really be open to it when you say it. Like feel what is that resistance. Okay. You have to be open without judgment. Like you're not fucked up because you have some limiting belief and you don't need some deep healing behind it. Like you don't. You just need to see what's in the way. Like this idea that my brother and sister had to out-earn me doesn't mean I needed to go through like some massive therapy because of some idea I developed when I was a child through my perception of things. Like nobody harmed me. It was just this childlike part of myself who only saw certain things. And I had this idea in my head. It was just this random idea in my head. I don't, I didn't need healing. It's just that's in my way. Okay. Like if you need healing for certain things, I'm not saying you don't. There is trauma, there is real things. Like, there is. But a lot of times we look at limiting beliefs like we need to go into some deep stuff. It it's not always that deep. And so sometimes we resist even looking for our limiting beliefs because we think it's so damn deep that we're gonna have to go through a shit ton of healing and it's just going to take so much time to get through that that we stop and don't even go further. Or we try and skip and do the quick fixes and just start going back to I'm rich, I'm rich, I'm rich, I'm rich, because we don't want to deal with it. When honestly, it's just a belief that no longer serves you. That's what it is. A roadblock does not mean there's something fundamentally wrong with you. It just means it's not doing anything for you now. I need, I need you to get out of the way because I'm trying to get somewhere else. That's it. My clients do, when I first start working with them, get tripped up on those first two steps. And I've explained to you why. The affirmation, once we finally get there, that's kind of the easier part. The reframe, once you have your clarity and know what's getting in the way, coming up with the reframe is pretty easy, but it does take some practice, but it's also absolutely essential to the process. So I don't want you to practice on your own through trial and error. I hate trial and error shit. Let's cut that out and let's get you manifesting. Let's get the affirmation you need by using the free affirmation generator that I have. It's a custom affirmation generator. I'm gonna link it in the show notes. You can get it at manifestsheet.com forward slash custom affirmation, or you can grab it in the show notes. They're linked. So you can get on there and it's gonna guide you through step one, step two, step three. You leave there with the affirmation that works for you. That is personalized, unique, and it speaks to the belief that you're trying to override so you can get to the desire you want. That way you don't have to guess. I still want you to practice the process without the generator, but use the generator. Like it's a tool. Use it. Stop, you know, don't rack your brain all week about your clarity and your limitations. Use the generator, let it walk you through it. It's just like walking through it with me. I made it because this is what I walk my clients through. And like I said, the two first steps when you're first getting started can trip you up. Because we're women and we have overthinking brains and we overthink everything. So the generator just helps you to kind of get through that and to say, okay, that's what it is. And it gives you an affirmation that speaks to you so that you can start to embody it. And to embody it, the simplest way to start, once you go and get the generator, because you're gonna go get the generator, make it easy on yourself. Once you get the generator and you have your new affirmation, your reframe, I want you to ask yourself every single day, what can I do to live this affirmation? That's it. That's just how how you start. We'll talk more in depth about the embodiment part over the next couple weeks, but this is just a great question to get started because I don't want you to be like, hey, go get the generator. Great, you get your affirmation, and then then now what? Like, then you have to embody it more than just say it, you have to embody it. So, what can I do today to live this affirmation? It's just a really good starting point. Remember to grab it, grab it, grab it, grab it. You need it because I really am excited, guys. The year is coming to an end. Y'all know I don't measure my year this way, but maybe you do, whatever. End of year. But if you want a fresh start and you want your manifestations to start moving for you, this is step one. The clarity, what's getting in the way, and the reframe. Like that is the foundation. So I want you to remember as we close out that affirmations don't change your life because you're just saying pretty words. Affirmations change your life because it changes what you believe is possible. And when your inner self shifts, your outer reality has no choice but to reorganize itself around your new truth. This is the beginning of affirmations that work. Once again, not because they sound nice because they came off Pinterest, but because they speak to the part of you that's been holding the real power all along. I'll chat with you next week.