The Unwinding Path

Photograph by just.K

There are small pieces of paper strewn about everywhere. Well, maybe not quite everywhere. They are on the floor beside my desk and are actually in a specific order. I have just completed the affirmation process as specified by David Mason with his hypknowsis.com Affirmation Method.

It turns out that this was a timely exercise to engage in since I had some personal issues that have caused me to be a little out of sync with my normal “go get ‘em” attitude. Since being off kilter, I have been struggling with time, organization, and general grumpiness. However, one of the things I was working on that caused be to feel rushed has ended, so now I am just regrouping and this is the perfect time to give this affirmation thing a go. As I am letting the process sink in, I will tell you a little bit about it (yes, I took notes as I did it).

I took some quite time and went over things that I need to work on and want to change. Setting my timer for ten minutes, I jotted “I” statements down on two pieces of paper (I came up with 73 statements). When the timer went off, I finished my statement and glanced over my words. There were a couple of times I found redundancies. Then I cut each statement out in strips (I only needed to throw one away – “I need to work on a professional web site”).

I then divided up my strips into eight piles based on commonalities. These commonalties included life in general, business, self, appearance, writing, relationships, travel, and family. Then I looked at my strips in each grouping and tried to separate them into negative and positive statements. On my first go round, this was actually difficult. I had trouble discerning what was negative because a lot of my strips were ideas like “I need to find a balance between selfishness and giving” or “I need to be more positive about my career.” Are these negatives or positives?

As the process continued, I opted to answer my own question and created positive statements as I would for self-hypnosis. In the above examples I wrote “I find a natural balance in taking care of myself and in giving of myself.” “I make positive choices to help me in my career.”

Then I wrote down my bigger goals under the headings that David presented – Self-improvement, Health, Relationships, Community and Financial. I created three to five goals (some year long, some five years or longer) for each, reflecting on the things I needed to work on based on information from my strips.

It was now time to group the piles of strips around these larger goals. What I discovered is that they are all related. One group works for one set of goals, but it also works for another and so on. In this way they seem to play off one another and act holistically.

Then I threw out the negatives and have my affirmations. I am just about to go and put them in various places around my space, so I can be reminded of them.

What I have learned from this part of the process, is that I was a bit out of focus, not quite knowing what to really concentrate on – there are so many things. Now I feel I have more of a grasp of what I need to do and what direction to go in. The affirmations will remind me of this. Some I can also use during self-hypnosis, so I think this process is a nice companion to self-hypnosis.

I plan to check in weekly for the rest of the month about any thoughts that comes to mind as I continue the process.