April 1997. A crisp spring morning like any other in New England. I was living in a dorm room at the college where I was a religious studies major. The dorm room itself was sizable enough, in that, simply by standing in the middle of the room, you could touch the walls on both sides.
It was the morning of The Shower That Changed My Life.
The night before, Iād been looking around my diminutive dorm room and realized that I had posted lots of sayings or affirmations around the room to make myself feel better. If youāve read a self-help book or been to a success seminar in the last forty years, chances are youāve heard of affirmations. Why? Because nearly every traditional success teacher tells you to use them!
As you know, an affirmation is a statement of something you want to be true in your life. So, examples of traditional affirmations are, āI am happy, healthy, and wealthy,ā āI am good enough,ā and āI am rich.ā Now, since Iād spent so much time and money studying traditional success literature, and since every traditional success teacher tells you to use them, Iād been writing and saying affirmations for years.
But, for some reason, my life still sucked.
THE SHOWER THAT CHANGED MY LIFE
That morning in The Shower, my mind wandered. I began asking simple but profound questions about the nature of lifeāmy life. Questions like:
āIf Iāve been doing what they told me to do, and saying these affirmations for so many years, how come my life still sucks?ā And:
āIf Iāve been saying these positive statements to myself for years, how come I still donāt feel good about myself?ā And:
āThere must be a better way to get me to believe something good about myself. But what is it?ā
Thatās when it hit me. (No, not the soap.)
I realized that the human brain is always asking and searching for answers to questions. In that moment, I realized that thought itself is the process of asking and searching for the answers to questions.
If thatās true, I reasoned, then a simple question formed naturally in my mindāThe Question That Changed Everything:
āIf human thought is the process of asking and searching for answers to questionsā¦
Why are we going around making statements that we DONāT BELIEVE?ā
I couldnāt think of a good answer to that question.
Thatās when everything changed for meāand for my tens of thousands of Students (who call themselves The Faithful) around the globe whoāve since learned how to apply what I discovered in The Shower.
Let me show you what I meanā¦
WHY AFFIRMATIONS DONāT WORK AS ADVERTISED
We all know that an affirmation is a statement of something you want to be true. So an example of a traditional affirmation might be: āI am rich.ā
All right, letās try it.
Say to yourself right now, āI am rich.ā
Try it again. āI am rich.ā
Did you hear what just happened in your mind?
A voiceā¦a voice that said something like:
āYeah, right!ā
Let me ask you a question. Tell the truth. Do you honestly believe your own affirmationsāor do you doubt them?
The plain and simple truth is that most of us doubt our own affirmations. Why? Because weāre trying to convince ourselves of something, and our minds donāt believe that itās true.
Now, traditional success teachers (most of whom, remember, are unconscious at allowing themselves to succeed) realized that you may not believe your affirmations. So they told you, with good intentions, that all you had to do was repeat your affirmations a thousandā¦er, millionā¦uh, kajillion times until you eventually, um, believe them.
Letās say you realized you were holding onto negative thoughts (for example, āIām poor, Iām lonely, I donāt have enoughā ). You decided you wanted something betterā¦said positive affirmations (for example, āI am rich, Iām happy, I have enoughā )ā¦and then hadā¦
Absolutely nothing happen?
Me too. And about a gazillion other people. Hey, we were only given chainsaws, so what else were we supposed to use?
But why? Why didnāt affirmations work for most of us? If it were as easy as the traditional teachers said, why did nothing happen for the rest of us? Were we simply incapable of thinking a positive thought? Were we not smart enough, motivated enough, educated enoughā¦or did we just not try hard enough?
The answer is: none of these.
The answer is: You were given the wrong tool to do the job.
You were told you could change your mind using statementsā¦when your mind responds naturally to questions.
You were told you could overcome negative beliefs using statementsā¦when itās so much easier to overcome them using questions.
You were told to tellā¦when you should have been shown how to ask.
What in the world do I mean?
WHAT EVERY PROBLEM YOUāLL EVER FACE REALLY IS
We typically fear, try to avoid, ignore, or get away from problems. But really, a problem is simply a question that hasnāt been answered yet.
Any problem, from the trivial to the tremendous, is really a question searching for an answer. Here are a few serious global problems and their associated questions:
Global warming: āHow can we stop destroying the Earth and still live the lives we want?ā
Poverty: āHow can we equally distribute the wealth of the world so that people donāt have to go without the basic necessities of life?ā
Unemployment: āHow can we get everyone working in jobs that produce wealth for themselves and help society function better as well?ā
(Notice I didnāt say these were easy questions. Thatās why we havenāt found all the answers yet!)
What about the problems people face on the personal or professional level?
Wanting to be more successful: āHow can I be more successful in my life and business?ā
Lack of organization: āWhy canāt I find what Iām looking for?ā
Wanting companionship: āWhy canāt I meet the person of my dreams?ā
If you want to change any of these, you could use the traditional affirmation method by saying things like: āI am a success, I am organized, I am good enough,ā and so on.
You may believe these statements, and you may not. Now, if affirmations work for you, thatās great. If, however, you find yourself not believing your affirmations (like most of us), and youāre not totally satisfied with the results, why not try something so simple, yet so powerful, that the traditional success teachers skipped right over it on their way to breakfast:
Rather than making a statement you donāt believeā¦why not ask a QUESTION that can transform your life?
HOW YOU CREATE YOUR LIFE
The staggering realization I made in The Shower on that fateful morning in 1997 was that you are creating the reality of your life at this very moment in two ways: by the statements you say to yourself and others, and by the questions you ask yourself and others.
Traditional success teachers have focused a great deal of energy telling you to change your statements. But until The Shower, no one had fully realized, or shown how to harness, the awesome power of what happens when you change the questions.
Your mind has what you might call an Automatic Search Function, which means that when you ask yourself a question, your mind automatically begins to search for an answer. (Psychologists have referred to this function of the human brain as the embedded presupposition factor.)
The greatest teachers throughout history have taught the truth of the statement, āAs you sow, so shall you reap.ā This is often called The Law of Sowing and Reaping (Emerson called it First Law) or The Law of Attraction, which means that what you focus on (the thought-seeds you continually plant) will grow and bear fruit.
Traditional teachers told you to change your thinking if you want to change your life. And thatās quite correct. What they told you, however, was almost exclusively to change the statements youāre makingāwhile almost completely ignoring the questions youāre asking.
Yet even as far back as Biblical times, weāve been reminded, āYou have not because you ask not,ā and āAsk and you shall receive.ā
If you only change the statements you say without changing the QUESTIONS you ask, youāre missing out on the fastest, easiest way to change your life thatās ever been discovered.
HOW A 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL CURED HER COMPULSIVE WORRYING
I got a call one day from Mary, a professional salesperson from Wisconsin who had attended one of our Secret Code of Success workshops. The first words out of her mouth were, āYour work has been life-changing to me!ā When I asked her what she meant, she told me the following story: