{"id":2047,"date":"2018-04-06T18:21:09","date_gmt":"2018-04-06T18:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/?p=2047"},"modified":"2018-07-25T19:55:06","modified_gmt":"2018-07-25T19:55:06","slug":"affirmations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/affirmations\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Reasons You Should Toss Your Affirmations and Start Asking Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Peg Streep<\/a><\/div>\n

I know this runs contrary to every meme and bit of self-help advice you\u2019ve ever heard; even thinking of it makes you look at your refrigerator magnets or those framed little sayings you held so dear.<\/p>\n

But, alas, affirmations don\u2019t work.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Research shows that no matter how often you say, \u201cI will be stronger when challenged,\u201d that declaration won\u2019t, in fact, motivate you to be stronger the next time there\u2019s a boulder in your path.<\/p>\n

Ditto for, \u201cI am beautiful and empowered,\u201d and any other positive, first-person statement that supposedly will help you conquer a belief about yourself that is less than positive.<\/p>\n

So, you\u2019re looking at the mountain and you keep repeating, \u201cI will climb it, I will climb it,\u201d but does that really help? It doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The affirmation is more like a doorstop. It doesn\u2019t throw your brain into high gear, trying to figure out precisely how you\u2019re going to climb that mountain and, moreover, how you\u2019re going to overcome the impediments and obstacles that could doom your climb to failure.<\/p>\n

Obviously, the downside to the affirmation also applies to everyday life and how you can be more resilient and resourceful the next time life puts a boulder in your path.\u00a0 Or what plan of action you should take when you pledge that you\u2019ll improve your communication skills or learn to manage your anxiety or any other goal you might set.<\/p>\n

But, thankfully, there\u2019s a solution: It\u2019s called a question.<\/p>\n

Why questioning works<\/h4>\n

Research by Ibrahim Senay and his colleagues showed that participants trying to solve anagrams fared better when they prepped themselves by writing down \u201cWill I succeed?\u201d twenty times and fared worse when they prepped with the affirmation statement \u201cI will succeed.\u201d So why is that? Following are five reasons you must toss those affirmations and start usingquestions to gear yourself up when you need to.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n
    Asking questions puts your brain in search mode<\/h5>\n<\/li>\n

    When you ask yourself \u201cWill I succeed?\u201d your mind begins to search for the answers to what you could do to succeed and, equally, what might stand in the way of your possible success. Unlike the affirmation which just puts a smile on your face and rose-colored glasses on the bridge of your nose, the question forces you to plan.<\/p>\n

  2. \n
    Asking questions shakes up your status-quo thinking<\/h5>\n<\/li>\n

    You\u2019ve turned to affirmations in an effort to convince yourself that you can do something you\u2019ve previously either had trouble with or outright failed at. Let\u2019s say that you\u2019ve had trouble voicing your own needs in relationships and revert to being a people-pleaser as a default setting. Telling yourself that \u201cI will speak my mind\u201d won\u2019t force you into examining what precisely stops you from doing so. By comparison, asking \u201cWill I speak my mind?\u201d should bring up both the historical reasons why you haven\u2019t and potentially ways that you can in the future. This is especially valuable if you\u2019re tackling a problem that is part of a repetitive pattern in life<\/p>\n

  3. \n
    Asking one question leads to others<\/h5>\n<\/li>\n

    In my latest book, Daughter Detox: Recovering from an Unloving Mother and Reclaiming Your Life<\/a>, I detail what I call \u201cdefault settings,\u201d or unconscious behaviors learned in response to an unloving mother\u2019s treatment, many of which are maladaptive in nature. Using the format of the question, research shows, facilitates understanding. Let\u2019s say that your goal is to be less self-critical and that one way to do that is be more self-compassionate. (This is research based.) Asking yourself \u201cWill I be self-compassionate?\u201d opens the door to other questions, including why it\u2019s so hard for you to be accepting of yourself and what obstacles stand in your way. An affirmation won\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n

  4. \n
    Asking forces you to answer (and puzzle it out)<\/h5>\n<\/li>\n

    The chances are good that you suspect that your inability to get something done\u2014deal with relationships, stop procrastinating, lose weight, or any other goal\u2014has to do with some flaw in your character, which it doesn\u2019t. Asking yourself, \u201cWill I manage my relationships better?\u201d \u201cWill I stop procrastinating?\u201d \u201cWill I lose weight\u201d etc. gets you into a proactive stance and forces you to come to terms with the underlying reasons you haven\u2019t been able to get whatever it is done.<\/p>\n

  5. \n
    Questioning opens up blind spots in self-knowledge<\/h5>\n<\/li>\n

    This is more of a summary point rather an additional one but it\u2019s worth emphasizing.<\/p>\n

    When you use affirmations, you\u2019re essentially confirming something about yourself you wish to be true. But what if your affirmation is based on something you\u2019re not seeing about yourself? What if you\u2019re not reaching your goals because you\u2019re not seeing the obstacles clearly? What if you\u2019re having trouble losing weight because you haven\u2019t confronted how you self-soothe with food?<\/p>\n

    If that\u2019s true, then managing your stress has to be step one before you can lose weight, and no affirmation about losing weight is going help. But asking, \u201cWill I manage stress better?\u201d will help get you on the right path.<\/p>\n

    What if you haven\u2019t gotten as far in your career because you haven\u2019t tackled how you avoid failure at all costs and are unable to take any risks? Questioning that fear of failure, rather than repeating, \u201cI will get a better job,\u201d or \u201cI will be promoted,\u201d over and over, will more likely put you on the path.<\/p>\n<\/ol>\n

    The take-away?<\/h5>\n

    A question yields answers; a statement doesn\u2019t.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n

    Senay, Ibrahim, Dolores Albarrac\u00edn, and Kenji Noguchi, \u201cMotivating Goal-Directed Behavior Through Introspective Self-Talk: The Role of the Interrogative Form of Simple Future Tense\u201d Psychological Science (2010), vol.21(4), 499-504.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

    Back to top.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    By Peg Streep I know this runs contrary to every meme and bit of self-help advice you\u2019ve ever heard; even thinking of it makes you look at your refrigerator magnets or those framed little sayings you held so dear. But, alas, affirmations don\u2019t work. Research shows that no matter how often you say, \u201cI will … Continue reading 5 Reasons You Should Toss Your Affirmations and Start Asking Questions<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","pmpro-has-access"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4MGMb-x1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2047"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2052,"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2047\/revisions\/2052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}