Why Affirmations Don’t Work – Part 19

Effort and Reward

I believe that there is a need to veer away from achievement, to some extent. There is a need to get away from constantly trying to merit the approval of others and to achieve great things in order to be awarded with something. This mindset of effort-and-reward can become a man-trap that imprisons you in the rat-race, with the rest of the “rats” who think the same way you do.

I wondered why I often didn’t seem to achieve anything substantial in my own life. I think one of the reasons for this could have been the anxious drive to achieve things in order to deserve something – as if something good can’t happen in my life unless I do something to earn it.

The Law of Attraction states that whatever it is you focus on – you attract. If you think about it for a moment, people who are anxiously driven to perform, do so from a mindset of lack. It is good to be motivated, but not when you feel threatened that nothing good will ever happen unless you achieve this or that – such a mindset is one of fear. It certainly can be frightening when you feel your best efforts are never good enough; that there is always someone better than yourself out there.

I would say that whilst it is good and healthy to seek to achieve good things and to maintain a good standard of performance in what you do – there is also an equal need to know that good things can happen in your life, without your intervention, without your having to deserve it.

The Law of Serendipity

You could call this concept of veering away from the law of effort and reward - the law of serendipity. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “serendipity” means:

The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

Have you noticed that there are some people who just seem to be plain lucky? Such people might be good at what they do and could never be considered lazy, but at the same time, they’re not always anxiously striving to be better than everyone around them. Then there are the people who are highly competitive, they are always trying to be the best. Such people might actually maintain a high level of performance. Yet, it might be that the normal, “lucky” person seems to be happier and have a better quality of life than the high-performance person.

I have noticed that highly competitive people can often harbour a negative side to their personality. Pride is often the inevitable result of an anxious, performance-driven mindset. I’m not talking here about pride as in healthy self-esteem – I’m talking about pride as in conceitedness and disdain towards others.

Affirmations often focus on achievement to the point whereby this law of serendipity does not get even a brief consideration. Performance affirmations can become a distraction that encourages a highly competitive mindset that feels there is no such thing as “good luck” and that good things have to be deserved in life. It is for this reason that balance must be attained if affirmations are to be effective.