Affirmations, along with its siblings and cousins, are somewhat of a staple in the world of self-improvement. The simplest form being goals. Usually in a long term sense. Quite synonymous with vision boards, the 10-year dream life essay, vision, and aspirations. At work, I learned about BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) that seem to be commonly attributed to the findings of Jim Collins.

"If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.” - James Cameron

My clearest memory of the idea of affirmations is from interviews and writings of Scott Adams, the Dilbert comic founder. It might’ve been first from the daily practice in the 5 Minute Journal from some 2015 timeframe. A simple practice of writing out the future self you aspire for (could be a goal too it seems….anything goes) and repeating it. Kind of like hypnotizing the self over time.

The logic could be as simple as how a basketball thinking he will miss the shot will probably miss the shot. Even if Wayne Gretzky took a ton of shots, I really doubt he had intentions of missing with them on purpose.

I was recently reminded of affirmations from Jim Loehr, the performance coach for the Olympic speed skater Dan Jansen. While training for his final Olympics, Dan had 35.99 on top of his daily training journal to break the 36-second barrier for speed skating. He obviously did, or else I wouldn’t be talking about it.

Survivorship bias? Damn right! If one doesn’t grab on to the survivorship bias of things that were supposed to be impossible before, then what’s the point of doing anything? However, I do acknowledge the skepticism for affirmations. You don’t just wish for $100m and it’ll appear on your doorstep, right? But it does give some kind of direction to steer one’s actions and the supercomputer that is our subconscious. That alone gives it purpose in a life that starts out devoid of it.

Turns out such a belief of high expectations leading to a similar outcome of high magnitude has a psychological term called the Pygmalion Effect. Thank you Rich Barton for that. This also reminds me of Pascal’s Wager. Simply, when debating on whether to believe there is a god or not, you choose to believe because if there is a god…..then the upside is you go to heaven for being right and if you are wrong….then nothing happens to you since there is no god.

Pascal’s Wager seems to be the key model for investing of minimizing downside for maximal upside. Such a model should be applied to other areas of life and when considering whether one should have an affirmation or not, it seems only logical that one does.

Now, the caveat could be that the person does not wish to achieve anything of magnitude or some dream. This is totally fine. I think it’s unfortunate but I doubt such a person would’ve made it to this point of the essay.