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You can't become successful with affirmations, and that's not at all what I've been talking about. What I proposed is that some beliefs are holding you back and

by swombat 14y ago

You can't become successful with affirmations, and that's not at all what I've been talking about. What I proposed is that some beliefs are holding you back and you can neutralise them with affirmations and other similar tools. Chanting "I'm going to be rich" in front of a mirror is not going to make you rich, but constantly, internally repeating to yourself "I'm not going to be rich" will most likely make you poor.

coliveira 14y ago
I agree that the negative thoughts may hold you back -- and this is an important self-awareness step -- but the affirmations don't do any good for you, either. You are wasting time that could be better spent doing something that may give you a better chance to become successful, like starting a company or learning to sell effectively.
- minikomi 14y ago
  Come on mate, identifying your pain points and spending a few minutes in front of the mirror reminding yourself isn't going to wear you out for the rest of the day!
  - coliveira 14y ago
    It is not a matter of effort, but of creating false expectations. If you use affirmations, you are creating a positive statement of something that doesn't exist. For example, to combat the idea of "I am a loser", you create an affirmative statement "I am a winner". The problem, however, is that neither of these statements are true. You are not a loser neither a winner a priori. All you can do is to improve your chances of being successful, since you cannot really control the results.
- dasil003 14y ago
  This is an awfully bold statement. It's difficult to overstate the impact of an individual's psychology. Self-awareness is not a simple binary switch you flip and then you have perspective. Every moment of our experience in the world is created by our brains in fractal recursion. If it's 10000 layers of abstraction down to the neurons, we can only hope to be consciously aware of the top 4 or 5. I'm not sure why you would jump to the conclusion that affirmations can't do anything beneficial for anyone.
  - wallflower 14y ago
    On the topic of Free Will, a new book that I would like to read: > His absolutist position, I should add, because, as he puts it near the beginning of the book: "Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control." We assume that we could have made other choices in the past, Harris continues, and we also assume that we consciously originate "our thoughts and actions in the present. . . . Both of these assumptions are false." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/books/review/free-will-by-sam-harris.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/books/review/free-will-by-...
    - swombat 14y ago
      I take the Steiner view on this Free Will thing. Yes, if you're looking at other people, you can't know whether they have free will. But when you examine yourself, you do have some level of insight into your own thought processes. How much freedom you have does largely depend on how much insight you have, but the point is, the difference between a mechanical process happening without your awareness, and our will, is that in the latter case, we can observe it, think about it, and change it. That's Free Will. The fact that there are subconscious influences is almost irrelevant. The important aspect is that it is self-reflective, able to understand and change itself.
      - drumdance 14y ago
        Harris would argue that even that capacity for self-reflection is just part of a very long causal chain. Every thought you have emerges from somewhere, but it's very hard to find the cause of that thought. You might be able to pin down that "I was thinking X because I was reminded by Y," but that just begs the question, why were you reminded by Y? There are an infinite number of thoughts you could have been having at that moment, but for some inscrutable reason Y bubbled to the surface. All that said, though I think free will is an illusion, in terms of day to day life it's more practical to act as if you have free will. I believe Sam Harris agrees. He is more concerned about the public policy implications, such as incarceration and rehabilitation.

by swombat 14y ago

coliveira 14y ago

I agree that the negative thoughts may hold you back -- and this is an important self-awareness step -- but the affirmations don't do any good for you, either. You are wasting time that could be better spent doing something that may give you a better chance to become successful, like starting a company or learning to sell effectively.

minikomi 14y ago
Come on mate, identifying your pain points and spending a few minutes in front of the mirror reminding yourself isn't going to wear you out for the rest of the day!
- coliveira 14y ago
  It is not a matter of effort, but of creating false expectations. If you use affirmations, you are creating a positive statement of something that doesn't exist. For example, to combat the idea of "I am a loser", you create an affirmative statement "I am a winner". The problem, however, is that neither of these statements are true. You are not a loser neither a winner a priori. All you can do is to improve your chances of being successful, since you cannot really control the results.
dasil003 14y ago
This is an awfully bold statement. It's difficult to overstate the impact of an individual's psychology. Self-awareness is not a simple binary switch you flip and then you have perspective. Every moment of our experience in the world is created by our brains in fractal recursion. If it's 10000 layers of abstraction down to the neurons, we can only hope to be consciously aware of the top 4 or 5. I'm not sure why you would jump to the conclusion that affirmations can't do anything beneficial for anyone.
- wallflower 14y ago
  On the topic of Free Will, a new book that I would like to read: > His absolutist position, I should add, because, as he puts it near the beginning of the book: "Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control." We assume that we could have made other choices in the past, Harris continues, and we also assume that we consciously originate "our thoughts and actions in the present. . . . Both of these assumptions are false." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/books/review/free-will-by-sam-harris.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/books/review/free-will-by-...
  - swombat 14y ago
    I take the Steiner view on this Free Will thing. Yes, if you're looking at other people, you can't know whether they have free will. But when you examine yourself, you do have some level of insight into your own thought processes. How much freedom you have does largely depend on how much insight you have, but the point is, the difference between a mechanical process happening without your awareness, and our will, is that in the latter case, we can observe it, think about it, and change it. That's Free Will. The fact that there are subconscious influences is almost irrelevant. The important aspect is that it is self-reflective, able to understand and change itself.
    - drumdance 14y ago
      Harris would argue that even that capacity for self-reflection is just part of a very long causal chain. Every thought you have emerges from somewhere, but it's very hard to find the cause of that thought. You might be able to pin down that "I was thinking X because I was reminded by Y," but that just begs the question, why were you reminded by Y? There are an infinite number of thoughts you could have been having at that moment, but for some inscrutable reason Y bubbled to the surface. All that said, though I think free will is an illusion, in terms of day to day life it's more practical to act as if you have free will. I believe Sam Harris agrees. He is more concerned about the public policy implications, such as incarceration and rehabilitation.