I was thrilled to hear that Franken won the senate seat. I marvel when I think it was he who taught me everything I once knew about affirmations—mainly that they were to be made fun of. Back in the early 90s—or was it the late 80s?—I watched his popular Saturday Night Live skit, “Daily Affirmation with Stuart Smalley” and would recite with his character, I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.
As a hypnotherapist, I have a new appreciation for the power of the affirmation. In hypnotherapy, affirmations are used as hypnotic suggestions. Through my work, I have learned that if an affirmation doesn’t ring true at all, then it will be rejected as a suggestion and ineffective. For an affirmation to have the power to create change, some part of the affirmer has to believe in its potential—even if it is only a small part.
I work with my clients to craft suggestions/affirmations that I can use in the direct suggestion part of the session. It’s so important to use their language in order to come up with statements that they can embrace and imagine. Once I suggested the word happy to a client as a part of an affirming statement. The client said, “Not happy but joyful.” I suggested the word joyful as a part of an affirming statement for another client, and she said, “Joyful isn’t the right word. I’d say happy.”
The other day a client emailed me to let me know that our session had been successful. She wanted to know what she could do to reinforce the success. I suggested repeating an affirmation while in self-hypnosis, and I provided a statement as an example. She wrote back and said that reading that statement brought tears of joy to her eyes. I was moved by this, but not surprised; it was her language that I had used.
