Why does the change in language matter?
I always resisted affirmation practice, despite multiple sources over the years declaring that affirmations absolutely work. They explained it like this: you take something you want to be true and state it in the present tense. For example, if you tend to stay up too late at night, then need the alarm to get yourself groggily up and to work, and this is a pattern you wish to change, you might say, "I go to bed early enough that I can wake up naturally, refreshed and ready to meet my day."
That present-tense expression is part of the key, every source I've ever read agrees. You don't say, "I want to go to bed..." or "I will go to bed...." You say, "I go to bed...."
So then what was my resistance? Because as soon as I taught the practice, I understood completely that it would work.
Once I couched it in terms of energy--that words have energy, and that by making that same present-tense declaration of truth you are invoking the power of the words to make it true--then the whole practice fell into place for me. And that pointed to the problem with affirmation. Affirmation has the wrong energy. If I say, "I am tall," I am affirming the fact that I am tall. (Relative to the general population, anyway. Let's not quibble.) But if, for example, I say, "Each month, I earn five times my expenditures"--which is not currently true--I am affirming … what exactly? I guess I affirm my desire that it be true--but the language of the present-tense expression jars with the reality. Every time I tried it, it felt like I was lying.
These present-tense linguistic constructions invoke the power contained within the words in order to make real what currently isn't. You are, more or less literally, casting a spell. So let's acknowledge it as such. Affirmation is a weasel word. It takes magic and hides it behind the banalities of psycho-speak. Instead, let's call them what they are. Let's call them "incantations."