It’s important to remember that even when you act with the best intentions, you don’t always know what is best for someone else.

Here are some guidelines to determine if you’re really helping someone or not.

It’s a significant milestone to me, but more importantly it’s provided me with a lot of experience about what it means to build a following.

This means our happiness and success largely depend on the relationships we build with others.

When building relationships on a day-to-day basis, we really only have two distinct choices we can make:

For example, if we repeat a thought like “I’m a smart and happy person” 20 times every morning, then we may begin to actually believe that about ourselves.

Reciting these beliefs is said to work because increased repetition of certain thought patterns (and neural pathways) is said to condition our brains to begin thinking in these new ways.

It’s kind of like working a muscle: the more repetitions you do, the stronger the thought will become.

Limitations of affirmations

I think there is some truth and usefulness to affirmations (I’ve shared some of my own affirmations with you guys before); however, I also think there are some limitations if we solely rely on affirmations to build new beliefs.

The reason I believe this is because our beliefs are very multi-faceted and dependent on a wide range of different factors – our moment-by-moment conscious thought is only the tip of the iceberg.

We can repeat a specific affirmation thousands of times inside our head, but if it doesn’t match up with our map of reality, then our unconscious mind will reject it.

Beliefs are not isolated thoughts that float through our head every now and then, they are embedded in a context of other information and mental processes.

Other factors that can influence our beliefs include:

• Reason: Many beliefs have some kind of logic or rationality behind them. So if you repeat an affirmation like, “I’m happy,” but deep-down you hold other beliefs like, “No one likes me” or “I’m not good at anything,” your critical mind is going to reject that affirmation – because it’s irrational in the context of your other core beliefs.

  No matter how many times you repeat that belief, your mind will rationalize it as untrue, because it doesn’t align with the deeper structure of your belief system.

  Solution: Ask deeper questions and uncover the core beliefs that contribute to your thinking. Only until you challenge your deepest assumptions can you really begin to make significant changes to your perspective and attitude.

• Emotional experience: Our beliefs are also greatly influenced by our emotional experience. For example, if we suffer from something taumatic, it is very unlikely that affirmations or reason alone can reverse our negative state of mind. This is because our beliefs resonate so strongly at an emotional level, that emotional experience triumphs logic reason. We may rationally understand that our beliefs don’t make sense, but we can’t let go of them because we have such a strong emotional attachment to them.

  Solution: Healthy emotional processing can be tricky. But as a general theory, I think we need to learn how to accept and express/”let go” of our emotions in healthy ways. Being more aware and attuned to our emotions is the first step, and the second step is learning how to channel this emotional energy in transformative ways (such as through open dialogue, creativity, meditation, prayer, etc.)

• Knowledge and facts: Beliefs should ultimately reflect how reality actually works. The better our beliefs model the world, the more effective they will be in helping us navigate throughout life. Therefore, it’s incredibly important to pay attention to the facts. Reciting affirmations that aren’t congruent with reality can be unhealthy and dangerous.

  Solution: Pay attention to the facts of reality, don’t dismiss science and empirical evidence, and be willing to let go of old assumptions if you find information that contradicts them.

• Social influence: Our culture and social traditions can also play a massive role in our belief system, especially during early stages of our development. We grow up learning certain beliefs and values from our parents, teachers, priests, and other role models throughout our life.

  Some of these beliefs may be useful, but some of it can also be out-dated and wrong.

  Solution: We have to at least be mindful of where our beliefs come from. If we merely choose a belief because it is popular and socially acceptable – but it doesn’t match up with our own reason, emotional experience, and knowledge – then it is very unlikely that belief will help guide your life in a positive direction.

These are important aspects of our beliefs that I think make the practice of affirmations a little more complex than some would like to believe.

The truth is that simply repeating an affirmation over and over again, without any context or meaning behind that affirmation, probably won’t be sufficient enough to implant that belief in our heads.

You should really only repeat affirmations if they hold some kind of truth or significance to you. An affirmation that is supported by your knowledge, experience, and reason is going to be vastly more powerful than an affirmation you just read about in a book or learned at church.

Ultimately, you should create affirmations that resonate with you, not something that someone told you is the correct affirmation to follow.

Questions.

• Do you use affirmations to aid your personal development?
• What affirmations work best for you?
• What tips have you found effective in making your affirmations stronger?

Feel free to answer these questions in the comment section below!

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Those who we typically perceive as high value (like CEOs, celebrities, athletes, politicians, good-looking people, etc.) we place at the top of our social hierarchy, while those we typically perceive as low value fall to the bottom of our social hierarchy.

While sometimes it may be useful to distinguish between valuable relationships vs. not-so-valuable relationships, this kind of thinking can also hurt our ability to connect with some people in productive and meaningful ways.

This is because often when we pass judgment on others, we are simultaneously comparing ourselves (and our own perceived value, or self-worth) to that other person.

For example, if we perceive someone as having extraordinarily high value, then we must automatically see ourselves as somehow inferior when compared to this other person. And this perceived difference in value can then cause us to act and think in desperate and anti-social ways.

For instance, in order to build a relationship with this “high value” person, we may feel the need to pretend to be more valuable than we actually think we are, or even somehow lessen that person’s value by picking on them or bringing them down.

One example of this flawed paradigm in action: The Pick-up Community

In fact, there are many concepts within the Pick-Up/seduction community, popularized by guys like Neil Strauss (“Style”) and Mystery, which rely on this flawed paradigm.

First, you have to understand the Pick-up Artist’s social hierarchy. This is known as the “Hot Babe” scale. Pick-up Artists feel the need to rate women on a scale of 1-10 based on their perceived value (usually it is based on good looks). They then treat women differently based on this perceived value.

For example, there are certain social tactics a Pick-up Artist needs to do in order to get an “HB10″ (Hot Babe 10 – a really good-looking, high value woman). These two main tactics include:

Negging: A “back-handed compliment” often intended to lower a woman’s perceived value. Pick-up Artists believe that HB10s need to be negged more so that they don’t think too highly of themselves (because that would presumably mean they wouldn’t want to be with you, duh!).

Demonstrating Higher Value (DHV) DHVs often include canned stories and “games” so that a woman perceives you as higher value (than you actually are). In other words, you have to essentially “prove your value” to the woman in order to win her over.

The irony is that the whole reason a Pick-Up Artist needs to use these tactics is because deep down they feel inadequate. They don’t believe they deserve “high value” women, so they have to tease and play games so that the women essentially gets “tricked” to believe they are worthy.

Throw out the social hierarchy mentality: People are just people.

I think it would do many people good (not just Pick-up Artists) if we put less emphasis on these social hierarchies that we’ve constructed in our minds.

All it does is put artificial boundaries around our relationships, which in the end only inhibits us from connecting with others in a healthy way – a way based on mutual respect and understanding.

As Sean Cooper eloquently explains in the Shyness and Social Anxiety System (a great guide for overcoming social anxiety and living a richer social life), all social value is a product of our subjective minds:

“The first thing to understand is that value is all in your mind. In reality, there are no ‘superior’ or ‘inferior’ people. The only reason why you see some people as more valuable than you is because you have some rules in your mind that determine whether someone is valuable to you or not. If someone passes all these rules and criteria you have, then you see them as valuable.

If you have low self-esteem, it means that you do not think you meet other people’s rules for being a valuable person.“

By being less judgmental of others (and ourselves), we begin to see and treat everyone as equals.

In other words, it doesn’t matter whether you are talking to someone who is really rich vs. someone who is really poor, or someone who is really good-looking vs. someone who is really ugly, or someone who is really popular vs. someone who isn’t well known at all. Every individual deserves your attention and respect, and there’s no real reason to be more nervous or anxious around one person over someone else.

(In fact, I truly believe we can find something good in everyone.)

And the great thing is: when you begin to see and treat everyone as equals (insofar as everyone has something valuable to offer), it’s much easier to start building relationships left and right. Your social circle grows and grows, because you no longer discriminate or worry about these fictional boundaries anymore. And once these silly social hierarchies are ignored, everyone becomes a potential friend.

Questions.

• Do you notice your perceived social hierarchies hurting how you communicate and relate to others?
• What types of people do you tend to perceive as “higher value” than yourself?
• How do you treat people of “higher value” differently than you treat those of “lower value?” How can you change this so that you treat people more as equals?

Leave answers in the comment section below!