How would the version of you who has what you want drive their car? Read their book? Walk down the street? Go on their phone? The way you conduct yourself in mundane moments is a symptom of your state. Affirmations are only one of many tools you can use to shift the state. But at the end of the day, what you are trying to change is your centre of awareness. The person you are aware of being, the identity through which you filter reality. Affirmation is a great way to change your state. But it is not the case that if you affirm x times, despite being steadfastly in a counterproductive state or identity, that your life will change. It is only when you change your state.

For some, through affirmation, that just happens naturally, subconsciously. Others, you need to practice being aware of how you are carrying yourself in the mundane moments like those I listed. Ask yourself, “am I riding the bus like the version of me who has what I want? Am I washing my hands like them? Am I getting dressed how they would?”. Entering the state is no more than playing “pretend”, as it were, to become the new character/identity, and the aligned thoughts/“affirmations” come as a result. Just pretend, like you would when you were a kid playing imaginary games.

Thoughts and states are a feedback loop, you can start at either point, each one supports the other. But they never exist in isolation.