How Releasing Statements Work: 4 Releasing Statements to Start Using Now!
About 25 years ago affirmations were the biggest thing in the self-help and alternative psychology world. Everyone was saying affirmations. They were everywhere, from best-selling books to TV talk shows.
I was always skeptical of this movement, however, because while affirmations seem good on the surface, they actually spike your stress levels!
Research also shares the harm of affirmations. Dr. Joanne Wood from the University of Waterloo in Canada found that positive self-statements can backfire on the people who need them the most. In fact the study, which was published in the Journal of Psychological Science, was titled, “Positive self-statements: power for some, peril for others.”
That’s because the majority of people who say these positive affirmations are trying to believe them, but they don’t believe them and these lies spike their stress. That’s how a lie detector works. It detects subtle physiological changes such as rising blood pressure, breathing rate and perspiration.
In today’s blog, I want to focus on releasing statements, which are very different. Releasing statements involve saying something that your mind, body and spirit know is true. Releasing statements won’t spike your stress level or compromise your immune system.
Today I am sharing four releasing statements that you can use immediately.
1. I desire to stop wanting and start having love, joy and peace internally. Most people live their entire lives wanting. Well guess what? You can’t want and have at the same time. So a good releasing statement would be...I desire to stop wanting and start having love, joy and peace internally because you are fully capable of that. It’s difficult to do this with willpower alone so you are calling on the mechanisms of your mind, body and spirit to do it. And wanting is very seek pleasure/avoid pain oriented rather than want what is best/what is right/ what is love based/what is integrous. But we come out of the womb like that.
2. I desire and ask to believe the whole truth and only the truth about who and what I am and about who and what I am not. Most everyone believes a lie about themselves based on what they have done or not done. If you believe a lie about your identity and about who you are that’s sort of like wanting to go on vacation without a way to get there. It’s just never going to happen. I believe that all of us are made in the image of God -- wonderfully, fabulously and miraculously. All of us have the potential to do anything and be anything and with very few exceptions. Unless you are on your deathbed, I believe you can still like to get where you would like to get to. I’ve seen so many people at this point at a later or even younger age. One of the fundamental problems, however, is that we believe a lie about who we are.
3. I desire and pray or ask to act on the whole truth about my current circumstances.
Most people blame their circumstances for their problems. If I can get a new spouse, make more money, get a new job, get a new house, etc, my problems will go away! Well that is totally secondary. Professor William Tiller at Stanford University has said that the unseen is the parent of the seen and it’s never the other way around. In other words, if you change your internal focus from anxiety and fear to love joy and peace your external circumstances are going to start to change. It will happen with flow and ease. If, however, you change your external circumstances without changing your internal focus you will still not be happy. You might feel happy for a week or two, but you’ll start to revert back to where you started.
4. I desire and pray or ask to give up the pain/pleasure of looking at my life in order to live in integrity and have the best life for me. This is the thing that we are born hard wired for -- to seek pleasure and avoid pain. We live that way for the first 6, 8, 10 years of your life. Then we are supposed to start living by integrity -- by what you believe is right and what is love based. This kicks in after the age of 10. But over thousands of years, we have had a devolution in our memories and programming to the point that today only perhaps one person in 100 shifts to this mindset and the others continue to live by seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, which is another term for living in stress.
When we are children our brain and nervous system have a built-in safeguard for that. It’s called the delta/theta brainwave state, which is a no stress state.But at around age 10 we switch out of delta/theta brain state and switch to beta mode, which is the brain state of stress. If you don’t switch to love-based living you will have constant stress which will suppress your immune system. What we tend do is stay in seek pleasure and avoid pain mode while we try to live in love. We say “I love you” but with one foot in love and one foot in seek pleasure/avoid pain mode. Our unconscious knows this and you stay in stress mode.
Try these releasing statements daily and I think you’ll start to see results. You can never experience true peace and happiness until you truly live in love and peace and joy. Focus on the internal and not on your external circumstances and use these releasing statements. I truly think you’ll start to see a difference!
Blessings,
Dr. Alex
