Do Affirmations Really Work?

Its a new year and time for a new you right? If one of your goals is to gain more confidence in your riding thats certainly a worthwhile focus.
Just think positive! You have likely heard this familiar advice at some point in your riding career. A popular way to encourage you to do this is to get you to write and recite affirmations. These are short positive statements about your riding such as I am relaxed and confident or I am a winning competitor.
But do these feel good statements work? Can they really help you boost your sagging sport esteem? There are mixed reviews on the effectiveness of affirmations. If they work so well why are we not all wealthy or draped in first place ribbons?

I believe... I think
If you are one of those people who has tried but failed to use affirmations effectively you are not alone. Research points to some specific reasons why this strategy may not work.   
The weakness behind the use of affirmations has to do with our ability to really believe the statements we are making to ourselves. Thats right in effect we get in our own way. You make the affirmation to yourself I am an effective rider. Your subconscious mind then kicks in and says something like you havent placed in a class in the last year get real! If the message you just sent yourself does not match your deepest belief systems the subconscious then interprets the statement as a lie and goes right back to believing what it has always believed.
Another reason affirmations may not be as powerful as we would hope has to do with the old what resists persists principle. Whenever we have a strong feeling about something it can be tough to just will it away.
This is exactly what Virginia psychologist Daniel Wegners research revealed. He put his subjects in a room with a tape recorder and asked them to talk about whatever they liked. There was only one rule they were not to think about a white bear.
Wegner found that subjects mentioned the bear very often despite numerous attempts and tricks to keep the image from their mind. His research informs us that the thoughts we most want to keep from ourselves have a nasty habit of growing in strength the harder we try to keep them at bay. What this means is that your attempts to