If you’ve read a self-help book, you’ve definitely come across the term affirmation—the practice of using positive thoughts and self-empowerment to help you achieve success. The essence of affirmation is that you speak your success into existence. Affirmations use positive statements to overcome negative and self-sabotaging thoughts. While affirmation sounds great, you may have tried using affirmations before, but did it work for you? If it didn’t, just know that you’re not alone — for years, people have tried using affirmation, but it hasn’t always worked out for them. So what works? Afformations, not affirmations.

In Season 6, Episode 42 of The Making Bank podcast, guest Noah St. John, also known as the “Father of Afformations,” shares how his epiphany in the shower 25 years ago changed his life. Through Noah’s afformations method, he’s been able to help his clients add over 2.7 billion dollars in sales. He’s also helped his clients earn more in 12 weeks than they would have made in 12 months, all by using his afformation method.

What Are Afformations?
Essentially an afformation is the question form of an affirmation. Rather than positive statements, you use positive and empowering questions to help change your subconscious thought patterns. The power afformations comes from what we believe in. When we use affirmations and proclaim positive statements, our brain’s first reaction is, “Yeah, right!” However, with afformations, you’re asking yourself a positive question, and you’re assuming that what you want is already true. For example — “I’m so successful” would be an affirmation, but if you used afformation, it would be, “Why am I so successful?” The difference is in what you believe. Most of us who have tried affirmations don’t really believe in them, which is why affirmations don’t work. Afformations use our brain’s embedded presupposition factor, which means our brains search for answers when questioned. When you use afformations, our brains start looking for answers to our questions, leading to us finding reasons that justify our question. Instead of seeing where we’re lacking, through afformation, we can find out what we have and what we’re doing right.

So how do you use afformations, and how do you make them work? There are two formulas that you need to know in order to use afformations to change your life. The two formulas are the Four A formula and the Core Four formula.

Four A Formula
The Four A formula is the four steps that you need to start using afformations in your life.

1. The first A is to Ask yourself what you want. To get what you want, you need to know what you want. By asking yourself what you want, you’ll be able to create something achievable as well as give yourself something to work towards.

2. The second A is to Afform that what you want is already true. Earlier, we mentioned that through afformation, you give yourself reasons for why what you want is already true. So it’s one thing to have a goal, but it’s more important that you feed yourself with the right questions to afform your goals.

3. The third A is the Accept your afformation as already true. Afformation works on us believing in our success; you need to accept that the truth is that you already have what you want to achieve. By accepting your afformation, your brain will develop the reasons for your question.

4. Finally, the last A is to take Action. While the previous steps are necessary, nothing will be given to us if we don’t take action. No matter how much you believe in yourself and your afformation, you won’t have anything without action.

Core Four Formula
So how do you go about taking action? By using the Core Four formula. This formula is centered around the four core modes of human communication — reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Noah explains that you can change your life by using just 5 minutes of your time a day. Taking action starts with reading; you want to start reading afformations for a minute. Once you’ve read your affirmations for a minute, the second step is writing them down. Whether it’s on a piece of paper or in a journal, you need to write down your affirmations and make sure it’s in your handwriting because writing engages our brain on a deeper level than just reading. Once you’ve got your afformations written down, you take a minute and recite them back to yourself. Say it out loud and speak those afformations into existence. The final part is listening; Noah has a site set up that offers audio afformations that you can listen to while you work, cook, exercise, or even relax. Visit iafform.com and use the audio afformations provided to reprogram your subconscious thought patterns in the background.

By using these two formulas for just 5 minutes a day, you can become successful, gain freedom and form the life you want to live.