Affirmations For Traders: Do They Even Work?

I have to be honest with you.

I’m the “Queue-In-The-Rain-Overnight-For-Tickets” type fan of Affirmations. 

This technique of repeating positively worded-statements is the single most effective mental training tool I have ever used with clients across 16 years of high-performance coaching. It’s also my favourite mental training tool for personal growth.

Affirmations enable you to program your mind to achieve your dreams.

But I totally get why people are sceptical of them. And also why people who do test them out are often left disappointed.

A lot of “gurus” on the internet would have you believe that writing “I can do it” on a post-it and sticking it to your mirror will change your life.

It’s not quite that simple.

The reason why so many of the generic affirmations on the internet don’t work, is because they don’t address the deep subconscious limiting beliefs and blocks that hold people back from success.

They are not specific enough or tailored enough to elicit deep transformation.

If you are only repeating “meh” statements that don’t address the true root causes of self-sabotage and underperformance, then you’re going to get “meh” results.

When created and implemented effectively, however, affirmations can change your life.

You just need to know how to craft them and how to practise them to unlock their true potential.

My Underwhelming Introduction to Affirmations

 I was about 23 years old, sitting in a therapist’s consultation room. The therapist was a specialist in eating disorders…and I needed help.

I wanted to be free of the constant self-criticism and the daily practice of assessing my worth by whatever number was reflected back to me on the scales.

Unfortunately, I was in the wrong place.

I knew this when the well-educated and well-meaning therapist enthusiastically announced his solution…

“Every time you have a negative thought, replace it with a positive one!”

Boom…eating disorder vanquished!

I can still remember the retort that flashed through my mind at his epiphany…

“Man—I have about 50 negative thoughts about myself every second. And you want me to catch and reframe every single one of them in real time? That’s going to be more than a full time job”.

I gave up on that therapist. I almost gave up on therapy itself.

And I came very close to accepting that my mindset, and therefore my life, couldn’t change.
Years later, after a psychology masters and many more attempts to heal through different disciplines, I realised why his advice didn’t work for me.

– his solution only addressed the surface symptoms of a deeper condition.

Mental Tennis

Let me explain this with a tennis example:

Imagine you are standing in front of one of those machines that spits out tennis balls automatically at a rate of knots. It goes haywire and shoots 50 balls at you every second so that you are getting bruised black and blue. 

Following our therapist friend’s solution?

You feebly attempt to bat every single ball away with your racket but it’s too overwhelming and completely ineffective.

Or alternatively… you just go and switch the machine off so that the balls aren’t pelting you any longer.

You deal with the problem at the root.

This is how affirmations can be life-changing.

Done right, you can use effective affirmations to reprogram your mind at the deepest level.

When you shift the contents of your subconscious mind, those tennis-balls – the critical thoughts, doubts and negative self-talk – don’t get produced in the first place.

You don’t need to play mental tennis to feel good about yourself or achieve your goals.

Over the past 16 years, I’ve used affirmations to help high performers—from professional athletes to traders and entrepreneurs—break through barriers and achieve peak performance.

The Science Behind Affirmations

Affirmations aren’t just feel-good statements; they’re rooted in neuroscience. Here’s how they work:

1. Rewiring Neural Pathways: Repeating positive affirmations activates neuroplasticity, helping you form new, empowering thought patterns.
2. Counteracting Negativity Bias: Your brain is wired to focus on threats and failures. Affirmations help redirect your focus to strengths and possibilities.
3. Priming for Success: When you repeat affirmations, you train your brain to expect and recognize opportunities for growth and achievement.

How to Craft Effective Affirmations

To unlock their transformative power, affirmation statements need to be:

• Specific – targeted to the root causes of underperformance as well as the surface, obvious performance challenges.
• Personal – crafted using language that resonates with you.
• Positive – structured using only positive statements and concepts.
• Vivid – ideally evoke a strong mental image and emotional response upon listening.
• Simple – using short sentences and simple language can help your subconscious mind to more easily absorb the statements with little cognitive effort.
• Deeply aligned with your unique challenges and goals.

The single most effective way to practice affirmations, in my experience, is to write a script of about 30-40 statements, all targeting the specific performance or life issues that you want to address. 

Then, record yourself reading this script out loud. Usually the recording will end up being about 7-9 minutes long.

Listen to the full script each day to reprogram your mind for success at the deepest level—it’s the constant repetition that creates the reprogramming. If you only listen inconsistently it’s likely you won’t experience the full benefits of the practice.

Bonus Tips 

Here are some simple additional tips to help you create affirmations that genuinely work:

1. Identify the Root Belief: Pinpoint the limiting belief or self-sabotaging thought at the core of the behaviour pattern you want to change. For example, the performance challenge of taking too many low quality trades might be driven by a core belief of “My trading results determine my self-worth as a person”.
2. Flip the Script: Transform the belief into a positive, empowering statement. For example, “I highly value myself for who I am.”
3. Make It Personal: Use language that resonates with you. Instead of a generic “I am successful,” try, “I am a consistently profitable trader with impeccable discipline.”
4. Engage Emotion: The more you feel the truth of the affirmation, the more effective it will be. Imagine the emotions you’d experience if the affirmation were already true.
5. Reinforce Consistently: Repeat your affirmations daily, ideally in a relaxed state, such as during meditation or before sleep.

Affirmations in Action

Let’s apply affirmations to a common challenge: trading self-sabotage. 

Imagine you’ve promised yourself to only take high quality trades, but emotions like greed or frustration pull you off track. Instead of berating yourself, use targeted affirmations like:

• “I wait like a tiger stalking its prey for my A+ setups to appear.”
• “I remain calm, composed and focused under pressure.”
• “I am a disciplined and confident trader; I follow my rules because I highly value myself.”

These statements rewire your mindset to align with the actions and outcomes you desire.

Your Turn

If affirmations haven’t worked for you before, it’s not because they’re ineffective—it’s likely because they only targeted symptoms or weren’t tailored specifically to you.

Try crafting specific, emotionally resonant affirmations using the steps above. Commit to a consistent practice and notice how your mindset shifts over time.

Affirmations are not a magic bullet, but they are a powerful tool for anyone willing to put in the work. 

With the right approach, you can reprogram your mind to achieve extraordinary results—in trading, business, or life.

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Want to learn more?

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