Just State Your Dreams

"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!"

That was the mantra of Al Franken's "Saturday Night Live" character, Stuart Smalley, who hosted a show called "Daily Affirmations." Now, the rest of the world is starting to sound an awful lot like Smalley.

They believe that positive reinforcement can bring them the life that they've always hoped for. Dr. John Demartini is the author of a self-help book called "The Breakthrough Experience." He visits The Early Show to offer advice on beginning your own affirmations.

A high school dropout, Demartini says he had never read a book until a 90-year-old man told him to begin a daily chant: "I am a genius and I apply my wisdom." Thirty-one years later, he founded the "Wisdom School," and has published three other books.

Demartini's definition of daily affirmation is to make a thought "firm and stable in your life. I like to say, 'Our mind is like a garden, and if we don't plant flowers in it, we'll be forever pulling weeds.' So, the idea is to plant exactly what you want to create. And I believe we have the power to do that."

If you feel stuck in your life, he suggests defining how you would love your life to be. He encourages people to dream and put their dreams into statements.

Such statements should:

• Be concise and reality based. Don't say: "I can fly." And make sure it's set in the present tense - not "I will do this," but "I'm doing this."
• Use feeling words - "So it doesn't just activate your mind, but it opens your heart, too. For example, 'I'm a master of persistence. I'm a genius.'"
• Have balanced polarity – "Don't say: 'I'm always happy, I'm never sad.' Say: 'Whether we're happy or sad, we deserve great things.' So, that way you have a balanced orientation."

Demartini encourages people to tape their affirmations. He suggests asking an authority figure to state them to you and get these statements on tape.

It is important to write your dreams out, say them out loud and repeat them, he says, so that they become reality. He compares it to marketing. "It's taking charge of marketing your own life," he says.

For fast results, he says you can take deliberate action, but he says by just stating your affirmations at least once a day, action will soon follow.

"I don't believe in just doing it for a few days, try it for a life, a habit for life. It's psychological hygiene. You brush your teeth everyday, so you do this on a daily basis.

" We do it anyway, we have these thoughts running through our mind everyday, but we don't take command of them. This is taking note of them and putting them into action," he says.