Happiness for Cynics
In this week’s episode, Pete tries to convince Marie about the science behind positive affirmations and how they can change your mindset.
Transcript
M: You’re listening to the podcast happiness for cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer and speaker focused on change and resilience.
P: And I’m Peter Furness, hug lover, shade thrower and sweaty Betty. Each week we will bring to you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.
M: So if you’re feeling low
P: Or if you are only satisfied with life but not truly happy with it.
M: Or maybe you just want more, then this is the place to be.
P: Have you ever tried the power of repetition? Got a song stuck in your head or tried to live your life by a quote or inspiration and then wondered why it didn’t stick?
M: If so, stick with us.
P: Ha ha.
M: Because today’s episode is all about positive affirmations.
[Happy Intro Music]
M: Alright Pete, positive affirmations.
P: This is going to be a fun one, ha ha.
M: Load of BS. Right?
P: [Laughter] I can’t wait to watch your mind unravel Marie, your cynicism and scepticism fall apart like an unmade Pavlova on a hot summer’s day.
M: I just have to say, I’m not doing it.
P: [Laughter] I beg to differ. I think this is one where you’re going to have to step up. You’re going to have to do it. You’re going to do your yoga, you’re going to do some Om-ing and chanting.
M: No, it’s not. It’s not me.
P: [Laugh] Outside the comfort zone Muz.
M: I have at one point put um… I’ve done a Grateful Wall, a Gratefulness Wall, and put things I’m grateful for. But positive affirmations.
P: [Laugh]
M: It’s just a step too far. It is relegated in my mind.
P: Okay, I think I think we need to explore this because as you’re discovering, I sat here and watched it. The science proves it.
M: Yeah…
P: [Laugh] So what are we talking about?
M: But you never really know who has paid for the science.
P: Oh, here we go, here we go.
M: [Laughter]
P: Who was the money behind the research?
M: Mmm Hmm right? It was probably the sugar industry is all I’m saying.
P: [Laughter] Or the pharmaceutical industry.
M: [Laugh]
P: Oh! did I say that, sorry.
M: All right. You tell me, what are we talking about?
P: We’re talking about words. Words are powerful.
M: The irony is that I was a journalist. So I’m down with words.
[Laughter]
P: That’s a fundamental standing point. If we start with that point that words are powerful and our words have an impact on how we interpret and feel and exude and shape ourselves. Can you agree with that?
M: Yes.
P: Yes. Okay, so we agree on that point.
M: I feel like you’re about to trap me.
P: I am about to trap you.
[Laughter]
P: Positive affirmations are used by lots of different people in lots of different ways. The fundamental belief is that if you can say something to yourself, you start believing it.
M: I am a Care Bear. I am a Care Bear. I am a Care Bear.
P: [Laugh] Can we agree on…
M: See I’m not a Care Bear. I don’t even believe it.
P: [Laugh] we’re going to come back to that in a minute. But if we can believe that, that’s what we’re talking about, is the phrases that we have and that we use and that are used by people to reinforce themselves or to make themselves change a habit or to make themselves feel differently about a situation.
M: Okay, I’m also not down with hypnotherapy. Just so you know, and we can do that another time.
P: Oh no, no, no, no, no, this is not hypnotherapy. This is different where we’re going to stay on track.
M: I know. We’ve hit the limit of my sceptic mind. My inflexible mind is just not quite coping with this one.
P: So I’m going to throw a few things that at you, so Dr Carmen Harra, who is a well known author and interpretive psychologist she calls herself. She has a couple of quotes ‘Affirmations do indeed strengthen us by helping us believe in the potential of an action we desire to manifest.’
M: Now the fact that she’s given herself her own title is not reassuring me.
P: Ok, let’s just look at the quote.
M: Ok, say the quote again, say it again.
P: We’re going to say the words. ‘Affirmations do indeed strengthen us by helping us believe in the potential of an action we desire to manifest.’ Can you talk yourself into believing something will happen?
M: I think it can change mindset not, not scenarios or situations.
P: Okay, so it changes mindset, so we can change our…
M: I can’t talk myself into being president of the United States.
P: Ok. True? Yes, but it can change your belief in the potential that you could become a president of the United States, if you so desired.
M: Ok…
P If that was your goal, and you’re using a positive affirmation every morning to keep you on track with that goal.
M: Then I’d just call you an arrogant nitwit.
P: [Laugh] alright, okay. Let’s move on to something else then.
‘In the sequence of thought-speech-action, affirmations play an integral role by breaking patterns of negative thoughts, negative speech, and, in turn, negative actions.’
M: This one I’m on board with, right. If you say a bunch of negative stuff to yourself or either internally and internalise it or actually say it out loud to self and you start sprinkling in positive stuff to balance that out, then absolutely, that changes.
P: So the power of words in positive affirmations can change the way that you interpret information.
M: And perceive the world.
P: We agree on that one?
M: Sure.
P: Great okay, all right, I’m going to throw another at you. This is from Rosslyn Kemerer. Who is a Yoga and Reiki practitioner ‘Speaking in the affirmative is life-changing because in order to speak positively, we must think positively.’
M: Again, I am a Care Bear. I am a Care Bear. I am a Care Bear. [Laugh]
P: Stop focusing on the Care Bear.
[Laughter]
P: We’re going to look at the quote and the words. Speaking in the affirmative is life changing, in order to speak positively we must think positively.
M: So, I do believe there’s correlation here. However, I don’t think that if you’re negative and you are in a negative head space that simply saying positive words is going to get you out of a poor mental state.
P: I actually agree with you on this one Marie.
M: Woo! I like that.
P: [Laugh]
M: I don’t think it can hurt. You may as well try it right. Let’s just throw mud at the wall and see if it sticks.
P: It doesn’t hurt but there’s a fundamental difference here in terms of what I’ve experienced with positive affirmations now being the buyer-inerer, the person that just accepts and runs with everything for years until I’m proven otherwise. I did get into positive affirmations there for a while and was following them and ruling them and so forth and perhaps my more cynical state in the last few years and my more scientific based, evidence based research, I have come up with some, some concepts that you can say as much as you want. Unless there’s a deep seated belief in what it is that you are saying that is part of your conscious and your subconscious, you can say whatever you want in it isn’t going to isn’t going to occur. So you could say, I’m a Care Bear, I’m a Care Bear, I’m a Care Bear.
M: And that is the end of today’s show ladies and gentlemen.
P: [Laugh] No, no, no, no. We’re going to explore this further.
[Laughter]
P: [DR] Sophie Henshaw, who is the person that I read and did some research on. She talks about it in terms of
“If what you are trying to affirm is in-congruent with a deeply held negative belief, then all that results is an inner struggle.”
And she talks about the fact that if you’re putting positive affirmations out there when you’re reciting these tasks, daily, daily, daily, but you have a deep seated belief in your subconscious that doesn’t support that, your subconscious starts to have a battle with your conscious, and you end up in this spiral of inner turmoil because you can’t reconcile the ‘I am a Care Bear’ with the fact that no, I don’t believe in Care Bears.
M: You don’t?
P: I’m using your example here.
[Laughter]
M: Yeah look, I hear what you say. And for me, I think positive affirmations might round out a positive, a positive personality.
P: Yes.
M: But I don’t see them turning a negative into a positive.
P: And you’re absolutely right.
M: And I don’t also see that someone who isn’t a Care Bear is going to become a Care Bear because they believe it, or President or any number of other things.
P: Actually, I’m going to pull you up there, they can believe it. They have to back it up.
M: And then the third group is the ones who believe it. And their reality is so separated, so far gone from reality. Their reality is not tied and they’re the arrogant ones that we’re talking about and we come across a lot of them playing sports.
P: Yep
M: Who believe they’re all that and a team couldn’t survive without them. And lo and behold, they’re the worst thing and the toxic person on the team, and you take him away and the team works better and they’re in this, this… And I’ve come across so many of these people throughout my sports career.
P: Yes.
M: Who… They might be talented, but they think they’re all that, and also in my professional career, who must be telling themselves some kind of positive affirmations or something. Their internal monologue in general is not based in reality at all. And they’re the ones I worry about as well.
P: There’s a disconnect between what they’re exuding to the outside world and what their true beliefs are on the inside. And this comes back to what we’ve talked about a lot with a lot of our episodes, about doing the work, doing the work on the self so that you can go down to your core beliefs, go down to your inner beliefs. And that’s where the subconscious rules. Because the subconscious draws on all those core and inner deeply held beliefs.
I could tell myself I am the world’s most beautiful model, but I know that deep down inside me that’s not congruent with who I am. You know I have, there are issues in there that will eke out and start to have that battle because I’m telling myself I’m this beautiful, beautiful person, that I could be a magazine cover model and deep inside that’s not going to be congruent with who I am or what I am or what I believe. There’s gonna be a lot of turmoil there which…
M: So, if that’s the case, then why do it at all, if what you believe is negative and you’re trying to then make that change?
P: This is where it comes down to the psychology of it and trying to again use positive affirmations that back up the work that you’re doing. So unless you have done the work on belief systems and what you’re trying to achieve, being truly beneficial for you and believing in it, positive affirmations don’t work. They’re just a Band-Aid.
M: So they just work alongside much tougher work.
P: Exactly.
M: There’s a great book that I read called ‘Can’t Hurt Me’ by David Goggins, and it’s a huge book right now. This guy’s a bit crazy, let’s be honest. He is amazingly inspirational. So ex-Navy, Navy, Air Force and Army, did Army Rangers. He was a SEAL, he’s just crazy, and then and then he went and did the ultra-marathon running with no training, almost no training, exceptional specimen of a human being. But it is tough to do all this stuff, and he talks about positive affirmations. I think you’ve got to be putting in the work and then putting in the work and then talking to yourself in the right way. And I know when you’re exhausted, how easy it is to give up.
P: Yep.
M: Right? And I think the power-
P: The physical capacity is done.
M: – of his mental strength is that he pushes himself harder when it’s the hardest, rather than allowing himself excuses when it’s the hardest.
P: Definitely.
M: And as an ultra-marathon runner. You know that’s 100 miles minimum, I think. You know by mile… who knows what, you’d be thinking ‘Why am I doing this? I don’t need to prove anything.’
P: Yep.
M: You know the internal monologue, my feet are blistered and you start that, and you start that talk to yourself, which is all about giving yourself an excuse.
P: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I actually have an ultra-marathoner who’s a client. This guy sleeps in ditches. He goes on these crazy three day bike rides, and then will literally pull over the side of the highway and fall asleep in a ditch in the freezing cold.
M: See, I think even, it is actually the definition of sanity to question why you even we’re doing that the first place.
P: But if he, okay so if Dr Bradley I will mention the name if you’re listening, Dr Bradley, I told you it would happen. I’d quote you here. He used, the use of positive affirmations in that instance is when you can tell yourself because you have done it before. So he’s doing these crazy training things to prove to himself that he can actually achieve these goals so that when he is faced with a run in South America doing a 100 kilometre marathon and if he is feeling that pain or that excuse to give up, in that instance positive affirmations could work because he’s referencing deeply held beliefs that he can actually do this. He’s existed in it before he slept in a ditch. He’s done this in the Australian outback, so why can’t I do it in the South American wilderness?
And in that way, you can train your brain to access those extra reserves of physical capacity via the use of positive affirmations and self-talk.
M: Absolutely so David Goggins ideas that we’re only using, it’s been years since I read the book, about 20% [40%] of our physical ability ever at any point and he thinks he’s gotten nowhere near 100[%]. But many would argue past 100. I don’t know if what he’s done is actually healthy a lot of the time.
P: [Laugh]
M: But I definitely think that when your mind is telling you to stop, you can definitely counter that by saying, actually no, I can do this. I know I can do this.
P: Yes, and it doesn’t even…
M: …that positive and balancing your negative self-talk with the positive. Where I struggle with positive affirmations as a cynic and a sceptic is with the very average looking young lady who wants to be a model, and she’s telling herself, I’m going to be a model, I’m going to be a model, I’m going to be a model, I’m going to be a model or the person who cannot, for whatever reason, put the sugar or the carbs away.
P: Yeah, definitely.
M: But is saying I’m going to be thin, I’m going to be thin, I’m going to be thin, right? Or I just don’t think that saying the words without doing the work can make any difference.
P: And science supports you. And even as a user of positive affirmations and the biggest jump on the bandwagon kind of guy, I support you as well. I believe that that’s the fundamental truth is that you can’t just will yourself into a state of being or a result by using positive affirmations. They have to come from somewhere deeper, based within in the subconscious, and that only comes from doing the hard work.
M: Now, sigh.
P: [Laugh]
M: After saying all of that, sharing my scepticism and with only a few minutes left in the show. I’m going to say that I did do some research.
P: Off we go, I’ve got some science here too actually.
M: And as much as it pains me to say-
P: Ha, ha!
M: -there is research that supports the effectiveness off positive affirmations. So MRI evidence suggests that certain neural pathways are increased when people practise self-affirmation tasks. I imagine that you’d have to do this without my scepticism, and cynicism.
P: [Laugh] not necessarily.
M: You’d probably have to put a little bit of belief and heart into what you’re doing and then as far as more research goes so self-affirmations have been shown to decrease health, deteriorating stress, so they help with negative stress. They’ve also been used effectively, and this is what we’re talking about before they’ve been used effectively in interventions that led people to increase their physical behaviour.
P: So that’s the cutting off the negative to increase the positive to create a desired result.
M: Yep, so if you are training for a marathon or just working out the gym or just hoping to get fit, then positive affirmations can definitely help to boost the effectiveness of the intervention you’re already taking.
P: Yep
M: They can make us less likely to dismiss harmful health messages. So this in particular was looked at in relation to smoking and trying to quit smoking. They can help with your intention to change for the better and also to eat more fruit and vegetables.
P: Really? I will eat bananas, I will eat bananas.
M: [Laugh] so that was Epton and Harris in 2008 who looked at fruit and vegetables and then Harris and some other researchers in 2007 looked at harmful health messages. And then the last one I looked at it’s been linked to positive academic achievement by mitigating GPA decline in students who felt left out at college.
P: Oh, really.
M: So this is, we’ve talked about social exclusion before. So students who were feeling excluded and not part of the group, generally they’re GPA declines. It has a real negative impact being excluded. We’ve talked about that so positive affirmations help them to keep their GPA consistent or increase it again.
P: Hhmm interesting.
M: And that was Layous in 2017.
P: I like all those examples. I’m going to throw something a little bit left field in here and trying to compute that GPA output with the social exclusion. That’s a very interesting…
M: Well, we do know that if you’re feeling left out, it can have huge impacts on your mental health, so.
P: The type of, type of person does for some it actually garners your resources and that makes you even more determined in a certain way. I think that comes down to personality.
M: I think you’ve still got to have someone. So if you’re at university and you have no friends I think there’s very few people that are not going to be impacted by that, and it depends on the level of exclusion. If you’re being bullied, that’s a whole other kettle of fish, right?
P: Yeah. Yeah. I’m thinking of the Sheldon’s in the world.
M: [Laugh] Who don’t notice and that’s why they keep going.
[Laughter]
P: Alright, I do know we’re running out of time, but I do want to throw this in there that some people have a different interpretation of the affirmations versus mantras.
I’m actually going to reference the work of the Gabriel Axel here, who’s a neuroscientist and a certified yoga teacher. He has written a lot on the use of mantra in terms of trying to develop a mind state, but also looked at the science behind it, using words like ‘Om’ and even ‘Amen’ in religious beliefs, he’s actually gone and done the science behind what the words do in the brain and he finds that sound evokes movements of energy within the brain. Evocations of certain sounds are linked with interoception… which is inner body sensations and in the emotional sense of self. Now these have found predominantly in the right hemisphere of the brain. Conversely, the narrative strand of sounds in which we give meaning is done in the left hemisphere of the brain.
M: Say that again.
P: The narrative strand of sounds in which we process meaning. So the way that we feel about sounds that come through our brain is done in the Left Hemisphere.
M: Okay, and sorry, what was the right?
P: The right is the inner body sensations, so that’s interoception.
M: Okay, sensations versus feelings.
P: Yes, what he’s talking about is bridging those two hemi-spheres by the use of mantras, and he says mantras from a physics standpoint, the sounds themselves will resonate in different parts of the body and mind creating actual interactions or events so therefore you can get sounds to cross the hemispheres of the brain to actually create different thought processes. So this is the science behind mantras and not necessarily affirmations. And he talks about validating a mantra for ourselves so we’ll be using the words such as ‘Om’ in a yoga practise, you can actually ‘Om’ your way out of a negative thought pattern.
M: Mm Hhmm…
P: It’s scientific. [Laugh]
M: Mm Hhmm…
P: You can look it up. He has supporting evidence from Mark Changizi who’s written a book ‘Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man’. So these are all interesting things will put on the website to maybe follow up.
M: Alright…
P: But you know, that’s just another aspect to come at it from in terms of the neuro scientific point of view.
M: All right, well, if the cynic me decides that I’m going to buy into this, I might read your book otherwise,
P: [Laugh]
M: it can be in our show notes.
P: [Laugh]
M: All right. I think we are going to have to finish this up for today.
P: So if you want to go out there and do some positive affirmations people, that’s all fine. But do the work behind it as well. I think that’s what we get from this.
M: Go do some work and throw in, layer in. It’s the icing on the cake. I guess is what I’m saying.
P: Yeah exactly.
M: It isn’t the cake.
P: No, you can’t rely on it alone. It has to be an add on.
M: Yep, all right, well thank you for joining us. As always, if you can like or subscribe to our podcast, we would very much appreciate it. And if you want to see our show notes or transcriptions you can visit marieskelton.com/podcast. Thanks for joining us.
P: Choose happiness.
[Happy Exit Music]
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