In my last newsletter (read it here), I wrote about how many people I consult with say they are very positive in their thinking yet are frustrated their positive thinking is not working.

While they are thinking positive, reading self-help books and saying affirmations, nothing is changing.

If you can relate to this, two of the reasons I listed were:

1. You still have negative thoughts.

2. You are vague with what you say

Here are some other reasons why positive thinking doesn't always work:

3. You use vague affirmations

Affirmations are positive sayings used to help produce a desired outcome.

Affirmations like:

"I'm a worthy person"
"Today will be a great day"

are virtually useless.

In affirmations like these you are trying to convince yourself of the desired outcome - which means you see yourself as not currently being in that state.

Your brain needs reasons.

To make these affirmations work, add ‘because' to the end.

"I'm a worthy person because ..."
"Today will be a great day because ... "

The ‘because' gives you the reasons and this is extremely powerful in helping you achieve your desired result.

Also, keep your affirmation in current tense - "Today is a great day because ... "

4. You have a past program that is sabotaging your positive thoughts

Your mind works on energy - the positive energy to do something has to be greater than the negative energy not to do it.

Positive thinking helps raise the positive energy. However, if you have been through a bad experience at some point in your life, this negative energy may over-ride the positive.

For example, you may be thinking positive about feeling secure within a relationship yet have feelings of mistrust and jealousy. This indicates you have been through an experience where the trust has been broken and you have been emotionally hurt.

As another example, you may want to succeed in life yet every time you get close, something goes wrong and you end up failing - again. For this to occur, there is a great chance you have been through some experience where you have succeeded and suffered emotional pain from doing so. There is now more pain than joy associated with success.

This same thing happens with many people who are trying to lose weight. There is a greater need (unconsciously) to keep the weight than to lose it.

In these examples, it is important to identify the sabotaging event and make that event work for you rather than against you.

In my life, I was unable to succeed in relationships because of being rejected at 20 years of age. In the relationships that followed, there was no trust and I was waiting for things to go wrong.

Fifteen years later, even though I had read many books, attended many seminars and received counselling, I was still being rejected out of relationships.

After studying how we process information, I began to help myself. Instead of experiencing that first rejection as a negative, I re-programmed it to work for me and now see I had to go through that to be able to help myself and others today. Without that experience, I would not be in a beautiful relationship with Julie. I now thank the lady who rejected me (in my mind) and see that past experience in a positive way.

Result: a successful relationship for 22 years.

If your life is not changing for the better, identify ‘why'. Is it to do with your thinking or a past saboteur that is holding you back?