Keysha recently posted about the value of doing affirmations. I’ve had great success using them in in finding the right relationship, and also to find a house in a neighborhood I dreamed about but didn’t think existed. Long ago, I used them to get a job in a highly competitive industry.

Of course, as Keysha mentioned, the trick is to do them (write them, speak them, sing them, whatever) and to keep doing them. You can feel like a big fat fool sitting around writing affirmations when you don’t have a job, for instance, or when you stubbed your toe and even the dog is giving you the cold shoulder. But keep on keeping on.

When you’re writing affirmations, it really helps to be feeling good. For me, that means turning off Morning Joe, where the panelists mean well, but they’re always talking about life going to hell in a handbasket. Face it; most TV is depressing. Turn it off.

Instead, turn on music that turns you on. Turn it up loud. Take a few extremely deep breaths; fill your lungs to capacity. Say a prayer (not a desperate, pleading, begging prayer. Make a simple request for grace and calm; accept it and allow it to evaporate all bad feelings). Shake off the troubles of the day. When you feel your spirit lifting, start doing those affirmations.

For continued motivation, excitement, and inspiration, turn to a good book about the power of faith, affirmation, and the Law of Attraction.  Skeptics claim that The Secret is hogwash; it’s not, but it may not be presented in a way that’s helpful to you. If you’re a Christian, check out Norman Vincent Peale’s Positive Imaging. Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization will appeal to people of all backgrounds, and it’s written simply and accessibly. I’m a big fan of anything by Florence Scovel Shinn or Claude Bristol, as well.

When you use an affirmation, you’re impressing your subconscious with your intention. You may have heard about how Jim Carrey, a man who once lived in his car, intended to make twenty million dollars and wrote himself a check for “for services rendered.” He visualized himself owning a spectacular house in California.

Well, you know how that turned out. To hear Jim Carrey discuss the power of intention, click here.

If you write it, it will come.

Affirmations. That’s a bunch of hokey pokey bullshit.

Or is it?

An affirmation is a statement that expresses – or affirms – your intent to create a desired change in your life, either personally or professionally. Many great teachers (like Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Susan Jeffers, Louise Hay) swear by the power of affirmations. When I first started Single Women Rule, back in February 2005, it was called EVE’s Society. EVE is an acronym for Energy, Virtue, and Excellence. I created three statements I wanted the members of EVE’s Society to repeat daily to change their lives:

I approach my career and life goals with Energy.
I maintain Virtue in all my relationships.
I strive for Excellence in all my daily activities.

I didn’t know it then but the statements were “affirmations” – a term I became familiar with in November of 2006 at T. Harv Eker’s Millionaire Mind Intensive Conference. T. Harv used affirmations to change his money blueprint – his habitual and learned thinking on success and wealth – and become one of the highest paid motivational speakers today. That’s when I began my grand tour through the self-help aisle - The Power of Intention by Dr. Wayne Dyer, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers, Ph.D., Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra – each author stressed the importance and power of writing and speaking your intentions on a daily basis.

The only problem with affirmations is that you have to do them. Science tells us it takes at least 30 days to create a habit or break one, 30 days for our brain to adopt new thinking patterns. I couldn’t get past day five.

The next year, I met Terry Hernon MacDonald. She ran a bi-weekly women’s business networking group that still meets in Shelton, CT. I read her e-book, How to Attract and Marry the Man of Your Dreams. Terry used affirmations to change her mind set about herself and the love she wanted, ultimately attracting her husband. I partnered with Terry to form SingleWomenRule.com because her message of changing your life by changing the way you think was my vision to empower unmarried women through EVE’s Society.

But I still couldn’t get past day five.

A few weeks ago, I met a friend for lunch and we lamented watching our dreams fade faster than a spray-on tan. Maybe we just didn’t want it bad enough? Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be? Why was the success we wanted eluding us while other folks, no smarter, prettier, fatter, or skinnier than us, enjoyed it? Read more »

To further mark this Chanukah/Christmas season, we’re pleased to publish the following article. We hope it will interest the Christians among us.

The Ultimate Christmas Gift: Renewed Appreciation for the Lord’s Prayer
By Kathleen McGowan,
Author of The Source of Miracles: 7 Steps to Transforming Your Life through the Lord’s Prayer

Sometimes attracting the right man is just a matter of getting your head together.

You say you want a long-term relationship, buy you find yourself attracting pretty much the same guy over and over again.

You have a gift for attracting a certain type:  The cheater, the man who doesn’t know what he wants, the guy with the addiction, Mr. Hot-and-Cold, or the knight in shining armor who just happens to have wife or girlfriend. (I’m sure you can add examples of your own.)

Even worse, you find yourself attracted to this same type of guy over and over again (so that when you actually meet a nice, normal, perfectly good man who likes you, you consider him a horrifying bore).

Well, this kind of thing happens to a lot of women for a lot of reasons.

Sometimes we’re attracted to guys who will ultimately disappoint us because of self-esteem issues. Sometimes we’re attracted to them because we fear commitment ourselves and know that becoming hung up on the wrong man means we won’t have to ever deal with the right one.

I used to attract (and be attracted to) bad boys by the bushel. I attracted well-employed, kind, funny guys, too, but I dismissed them as unexciting (in other words, they just weren’t complicated enough).

After a while, I realized I had a problem. How did I fix it?

I started using affirmations. On some level I really did want to get married. On another level, I came to realize, I did not want to get married. I gave some serious thought to why I didn’t, wrote down the reasons (being smothered in a marriage, being abandoned, betrayed, disappointed, losing my identity, and on and on).

And then I thought, “Would it have to be that way?” And I brought to mind examples of people I knew who enjoyed happy, exciting marriages and built that kind of relationship for myself in my mind.

Back to the affirmations. I started writing, reciting, and thinking, “I am happily married to a loyal, loving, reliable, successful, fun man.”

Sometimes I’d get scared when I wrote or said those words, and then I’d ask myself, “What exactly are you reacting to here?”

And I’d give my feelings serious thought.

Sounds silly, but once you can get to the root of your fears, you can face those fears and overcome them. And then, suddenly and magically, you will find yourself attracting better men –and more important — being attracted to them.

If attracting the wrong men is your problem, try this affirmation:

“I am attracted to loving, loyal, fun men who make my happiness a priority.”

And then,

“I am attracting loving, loyal, fun men who make my happiness a priority.”

What’s your gut feeling after you write or say these? Do yourself a favor and examine that feeling.

And keep using those affirmations. Every day. They’re not hocus-pocus, so try ‘em and see for yourself.

by Noah St. John, Author of The Secret Code of Success

Use author Noah St. John's tips to avoid a holiday meltdown.

Contrary to what we’ve been told, most holiday stress is completely unnecessary. Just because holiday stress is normal doesn’t mean it’s natural.

If your holidays feel more like “stress on steroids” than “peace on Earth”, take a deep breath and follow these 5 tips to avoid a holiday meltdown:

1. Give yourself permission to be imperfect.
The #1 cause of holiday stress is believing everything has to be perfect. This in turn stems from thinking you’re not good enough.
Well, you ARE good enough, even though you’re not perfect. Just accept it and move on.

2. Let go of your high – and low – expectations.
Americans either revel in or dread the holidays. The difference lies in your expectations. Expecting people and situations to be anything but what they are, is like asking Santa to not like kids!

Stop expecting people and things to change. False or misplaced expectations kill relationships – and your chances for holiday happiness. When you change your perspective of something, the thing you’re looking at changes. Read more »