Five categories of affirmations support you in manifesting powerful change. These five categories or types of affirmations have emerged from my consulting work with clients and workshop participants. You may work with affirmations in every category concurrently, or you may focus on a different category each day or each week. It is important that affirmations you select resonate with you, that is, that they feel natural and appropriate. In order to experience this resonance, you may need to change words in the ones listed here as examples, or let these inspire you to create ones you prefer, or develop your own from scratch.

Popular Affirmations

Many popular affirmations are beautiful, indeed, they are quite extraordinary! However, if you do not believe them, they are useless or even counterproductive. If you say an affirmation you do not believe, saying it repeatedly will not make you believe it. Actually, the repetition can build up greater resistance to believing it. Consider this example: Sam feels powerless. He has had many experiences that he can point to that justify his feelings and his belief in his own powerlessness and unworthiness. Saying "I am powerful" is less likely to erase his feelings of powerlessness than to prompt an emphatic reaction, such as, "Oh, no, I'm not!" If Sam does not deal with the resistance, he carries it with him as he lives his life.

An empowering process emerges by using these five categories of affirmations in a systematic way to assist you in embracing an affirmation that you desire to believe but do not. If you have an intention and a desire to say and believe "I am powerful," start by releasing powerlessness, open to the possibility of being powerful, affirm an intention and readiness to live in your power, claim your power, and let the idea of powerfulness integrate into your life.

Following are the five categories of affirmations described briefly with a few examples of each type.

Releasing/Cleansing Affirmations

The purpose of Releasing and/or Cleansing Affirmations is to let go of unwanted and unneeded stuff. Especially, they help you let go of resistance. They allow you to purify your system. These affirmations stimulate the release of toxins such as negative thought forms, repressed or suppressed emotions, old memories, negative bonds with others, karma, dark consensus reality, illusions of all types.

Examples:

• I give myself permission to release toxicity from every level of my energy field.

• I rescind outdated vows of poverty, celibacy, struggle, silence, and unworthiness.

• I release resistance.

• I let go of old programs that keep me stuck in old patterns.

• I let go of everything I do not want or need for my highest good.

Receiving/Accepting Affirmations

The purpose of Receiving and/or Accepting Affirmations is to open to allow something to be. They allow us to receive goodness from the Universe. They neutralize the misqualification of energy; that is, they can reverse illness or other density. In addition, they help us shift the attention from disempowering actions such as, "getting" or "taking" to more freeing concepts such as, "receiving" and "allowing" and "accepting."

Examples:

• I open to the gifts of the Universe.

• I allow abundance to flow through me.

• I accept support when I need it.

• Dear God, please let me know what to do in a way that I can understand.

• I accept peace and joy in all aspects of my life.

Being/Intending Affirmations

The purpose of Being and/or Intending Affirmations is to ground your purpose, especially your higher purpose. These affirmations enhance conscious awareness of your intention about something or about your mission in life. In addition, these affirmations can deepen your understanding of your reason for being and/or acting generally or in a specific situation. They can be used to enhance any and all actions that follow.

Examples:

• I know that this is for the highest good of all concerned.

• I deepen my awareness of the consciousness from which actions spring.

• I live my mission.

• My intention is to live free from struggle, fear, and hopelessness.

• I remember.

Acting/Claiming Affirmations

The purpose of Acting and/or Claiming Affirmations is to bring something into manifestation or to direct the energy of your intention to appropriate manifestation. These affirmations bring into the physical experience those ideas that you hold in your mind and/or heart. In addition, these affirmations help you to claim your power and establish boundaries in relationships.

Examples:

• I act with high intention and purposeful awareness.

• I step into the world to live my mission in every word and action.

• I demand my good right now.

• I make every act an act of love (or freedom or mastery or hope, etc.).

• I am powerful. I am worthy. I am loveable. I am free.

Integrating/Embodying Affirmations

The purpose of Integrating and/or Embodying Affirmations is to allow the energy and meaning of the affirmations to merge with your consciousness. Affirmations and ideas that do not resonate, drop away. Integrating/Embodying Affirmations support us in knowing more deeply -- integrating -- what we have learned rather than introducing new information.

Examples:

• I integrate trust into every aspect of my life.

• I breathe love into my job, my body, my relationships.

• Yes to Life!

• Today is an opportunity for peace.

• I breathe in abundance, letting my whole body feel its energy.

Affirmations as Lifestyle

As you work more and more with intentional affirmations -- written, spoken, read, chanted, meditated upon -- you will make them part of your lifestyle. Affirmations are already working for (or against!) you. It is your job to select the ones you want to live by. Remember, you are already using affirmations every time you think or speak! If your current affirmations are disempowering, you can intentionally change them to ones that you choose to live by.