Changing Your Habits
Affirmations
Have you ever heard of an “affirmation”? It’s called an affirmation because you are declaring and confirming your desires to yourself. The declaration you are making is not true today, but your subconscious does not know that. You are pronouncing your conscious wishes to your subconscious mind. With regular and frequent repetition of your affirmations, your subconscious mind will eventually come to believe your words that it hears and will begin to operate with these affirmations as the main force or driver of your actions.
Results do not happen in a day, but scientific experiments on how long it takes for the brain to rewire itself with new neural pathways suggest that it can take anywhere from 30 days or a bit longer depending on the frequency and emotional impact of your affirmations. The key is to repeat them as frequently as possible, and with the maximum positive emotion, every day.
Some affirmations suggested by John Assaraf are: “I give myself permission to be powerful!”, “I am a success in all that I do!”, “I am totally confident!”, “I am committed, passionate and determined about what I do!”, “I am perfectly happy and healthy!”, 
Others are, “I am the best version of me that I can be!” and “My mind is open to new ideas!”.
Try the following ones for controlling your urges for cooked food and alcohol: “I eat only raw, uncooked foods!”. I only drink things that are healthy for me!”. Make some private time and develop your own affirmations. You will get some great ideas from The Answer and from The Complete Vision Board Kit.
When you make up your affirmations, keep them in the present tense because your subconscious does not understand the past or the future. It only recognizes the “now”. Your affirmations should always be positive and never include negative words like “no” or “never” or “not” or “negative”. Besides only knowing the “now” in terms of tense, your subconscious does not recognize “no” or “not”. For example, instead of saying, “I don’t eat cooked foods”, say, “I only eat foods that are uncooked and healthy for me”. Another example is, instead of saying, “I don’t drink alcohol”, say, “I only drink things that are healthy for me”.
Start believing your affirmations with all your heart. See yourself clearly as the person you dream of being. Make a list of all of your affirmations. The longer the list, the better. My list is 3 pages long and growing daily.
Repeat your affirmations over and over and over as many times as you can. Do this exercise as many times throughout the day as you can for thirty days in a row and you will begin to reshape your subconscious. Soon, you will know that “you really can!” and your mind will start to open up to new and exciting discoveries. Yes is a very powerful word.
Repetition of your affirmations is important but the element of emotion will make them work even better. When you are saying your affirmations, think of an experience that make you feel a strong positive emotion. Maybe it’s falling in love, maybe it’s succeeding at one of your biggest challenges. Whatever it is, try to feel the same emotion when you are repeating your affirmations and they will influence your subconscious with greater impact. I find that certain music helps me to create the strong emotion I am looking for.
Recorded and Subliminal Messages
Take your list of affirmations and record your voice speaking them on a recorder. There are several computer programs like Garage Band that will allow you to record your spoken affirmations. Now you can play them back to yourself throughout the day on your iPod or iPhone or some other playback device.
You can also record an emotionally charged music track and record that over your voice affirmation track where the music is clearly heard and the voice is barely noticeable and not understandable. This is a subliminal message to your subconscious. Your conscious mind will not hear your words, but your subconscious will.
Listen to both versions frequently. Listen to the version where you can clearly hear your words and then listen to the subliminal version. Listen to them while you are looking at your vision boards. Listen to them when you are walking or hiking. Listen at night and in the morning when you are just going into or coming out of your sleep state.
Affirmations are a powerful tool to help you control your actions.