Targeted Affirmation Tip #1: Creating Intentions: Intend to Have What You Want In recent years, there has been a lot of backlash against affirmations. Many people believe that they don't really work. I believe the reason for this is because many people tried what seemed like a great idea, didn't do it quite right, and then became discouraged. I'm actually one of those people! I've been getting a lot of questions about affirmations lately, so I decided to revisit this topic. My Personal Affirmation Failure I started using affirmations when I was in the seventh grade. I remember having a small book about positive thinking that recommended using affirmations to feel happier and more relaxed. I was feeling very sad and anxious at the time, and repeating the affirmations really wasn't working for me. I remember reading affirmations to myself like: "I feel good" "I deserve to feel good" "I feel relaxed" And they really didn't help me to feel any better. In fact, reading the affirmations frustrated me. I would say the affirmation and just feel worse, because it didn't match what I was actually feeling. It felt shallow somehow, like I was trying to fix something within me on a surface level without digging deeper. Have you ever had this experience using affirmations? Maybe our society and knowledge of how to use techniques like this is evolving, because I don't remember ever reading anything about how affirmations don't work, when I was younger. Everyone just seemed so excited to have a new technique to use. There wasn't a whole lot of talk about how to do it correctly, so that it actually works. Why Affirmations Don't Work (Sometimes)