SELF-AWARENESS 101 #7: THE TWO MOST POWERFUL WORDS YOU WILL EVER SAY

Today, I’m going to explore the concept that says, the two most powerful words you will ever say. “I AM.”

Over the years I have learned a lot of things that have dramatically changed my life. And one of the things that shifted a paradigm in me, was when I learned that the most powerful statement that someone can make, the two most powerful words in human behavior, psychology and in metaphysics are “I am.”

When you say “I am”, followed by any statement, and especially when you add a level of certainty or emotion to it, that statement becomes your reality… in many cases, it becomes your identity. What has been proven time and time again is when you combine these two powerful words “I Am” with intensity and emotion, everything around you moves to support that statement.

I’ll give you an example. I’ve shared before that I drank from the time I was 13 to the time I was 24 and I drank heavily. I avoided any responsibility for years. I had a very strong Identity that defined me. For years I thought, “I am an evil person and I am being punished”. Because of that Identity, I took all the terrible things that were happening to me and placed the blame on God, The Universe and others because I believed everything that happened to me was happening because I was a bad person and being punished.

Then came a moment in my life, based on many experiences that opened me to new possibilities, that I created a new Identity. A point came where I had to say with certainty, “I am an alcoholic.” And when I said those words, things shifted, and on an unconscious level, I no longer was able to make excuses for why I was drinking. I now had the identity of being and “alcoholic”. By making the statement and claiming the identity that I was an alcoholic, everything I knew on an unconscious level came up to support me in that statement.

Now, let me explain conscious and unconscious for a moment. Your conscious mind acts as a filter. It filters things through your beliefs, through your rules, through your values. Your unconscious just absorbs everything like a sponge. Your unconscious is called to action by your conscious mind based on how you direct your focus.

For me, identifying myself as an alcoholic, and doing it with certainty, it called on my unconscious to bring up all these references and resources that said, “Okay, if you’re an alcoholic, here are the ways that you act. Here are the things alcoholics do”

By acknowledging these things, it gave me a starting point, to begin correcting my life. By announcing “I am an alcoholic”, I was no longer denying my involvement in how I’d messed up my life. In that moment, I had to accept responsibility and accountability. So I started taking actions that supported me in becoming a recovering alcoholic. The identity changed from, “I am an alcoholic” to “I’m recovering. I am no longer drinking.” With this shift of “I am” and adding the certainty to the new statement, my unconscious started pulling different references and resources to support this new Identity.

Every time you put something after the two most powerful words ” I am” and you say it with certainty, your unconscious will accept that as your Identity and do things, millions of things, within nanoseconds to support you in that moment.

Now, saying “I am an alcoholic” was a great step for me in adapting a new Identity and helping me create new choices for myself, it also became something later on that limited me. As I got farther into my development, I started recognizing that I reached what many people refer to as a glass ceiling. Even though I was working diligently on myself, I wasn’t growing the way that I wanted to grow. And soon I discovered the reason that I was having trouble progressing was because I continued to identify myself as an alcoholic. So even though I was working hard on my personal and spiritual development, each time I Identified myself as an alcoholic, my unconscious mind was supporting me in that Identity by pulling up all of these references that said, “Okay if you’re an alcoholic, you need to act, think and be like this _______.” So when I reached a certain point, an Identity that used to serve me, no longer did and began to limit me.

As I began to more deeply understand the power of “I am” and “Identity”, through studying human behavior and psychology, I decided that I needed to stop identifying myself as an “alcoholic”.

Now, I want to be very clear at this point. I believe that I needed to identify myself as an alcoholic, early on, to accept responsibility and to begin taking the steps toward recovery. I do not believe that I would have stopped the self-destructive path I was on if I had not claimed that Identity. And I got to a point, in my growth where I needed to change my identity to continue to grow.

Understand that we can change our identity at any point in time. Most people don’t even realize how they create identities for themselves and change them. People walk around all day long, making excuses and complaining saying, “I am lazy.” Or, “I’m a procrastinator.” They say things like, “I’m just fat, you know, that’s the way it is.” But the thing is, when we say those things with certainty, our unconscious mind does everything it needs to do to support us in that statement.

So what I invite you to do is to become aware of how you label yourself.

Now I’ve had people come to me and say, “You know Will, I’ve been taught to do incantations and affirmations that say, I am thin, I am a non smoker, I am these things I want to be, and it never works.” The reason is that you’re saying these things on a conscious level and you’re filtering it, meaning that you’re not doing it with certainty. So you may be saying the words, “I am thin”, but you lack any sense of certainty, so the very next moment your conscious brain is saying, with certainty, “No I’m not. I am fat!”

So how can we address this when we are attempting to make a change? Begin with small adjustments. Begin making the statement, “I am taking steps to become thin.” Or, “I am deciding to make a change now and become healthier.” Find a statement that you can believe in, and adopt it as your Identity. Then as you progress, change the statement as you gain more certainty in your new Identity.

The things that get us into trouble and that we take for granted are the simple statements. We make a mistake and say, “I am a failure.” And we say it with completely certainty based on the mistake we made without even thinking about it. Many times we even joke about it and say it repeatedly. The more times you tell yourself something using words like these, the more certain you become in it being true . When you gain that level of certainty, it becomes your truth, it becomes your Identity.

So what I want you to invite you to do is for the next ten days, become hypersensitive to the powerful words, “I am ” and what you say after them.

Keep track, how many times do you say, “I am ____”, something that empowers you or how many times are you saying “I am _____”, something that is disempowering or tearing you down. Become aware. Awareness is the key. Then start changing how you address yourself. This is a very extensive subject, we’re not going to be able to cover all of it right here and right now. But a it is a great place to start. What I invite you to do at this moment is simply become aware of how you’re identifying yourself. A small change in your Identity can make a major shift in your reality.