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The last day of October isn't a day that most of us would choose to visit a beach in the UK, but stranger than the time of year is the group of minds that met that afternoon. Stranger still is the subject they discussed.

Imagine it: a golden sandy beach, littered with seaweed, bottle tops and bird feathers; a place that had been battered by gale-force winds in the preceding days. And with the setting sun, the needles of the Isle of Wright in the distance, the leading personal development coach, an expert hypnotherapist and an acclaimed author began exchanging views with a passion on an issue that hurts millions of peoples' lives and is quite probably hurting yours.

Let me tell you more.

The author laughed and then announced that he had worked on a visualization and an affirmation a while back. That visualization had him standing on a beach, in Christchurch, Bournemouth, in November having just agreed the undertaking for a new house. His affirmation backed up his coming success and he had four good reasons for his laughter:

First, he laughed because only the day before he had agreed to undertake a new property.

Second, he laughed because he realised that he had arrived on the beach five days earlier than expected.

Third, he laughed because the property was not in fact in Bournemouth ' as he'd thought it might be - but eighty miles west, and

Fourth, and most worryingly, he laughed because neither his visualization nor his affirmation stated where the house would be! And this is when the conversation on bringing what you want into your life ensued, and this is where you can find the answers to what might be hurting your life.

The author said he'd been researching ways spiritual teachers claim to have brought things into their life more quickly and mentioned he'd discovered that making this happen was all about closing the gap between 'willing' something to happen and 'experiencing' it in your world.

And here the leading coach threw the expert hypnotherapist a challenge that clients had thrown at her in the past. 'When a person affirms something such as...' she said, pointing out into the harbour, 'I have a yacht' the mind immediately contradicts the affirmation and says, 'but you don't'. The hypnotherapists reply made a lot of sense.

He said, 'The sub-conscious mind doesn't understand reality. If you tell it you have something then it believes you already have it and will behave accordingly ' it closes the gap.'

This made good sense to the coach. It's the power of suggestion at work. Like when someone says they are hungry and ten seconds later your stomach rumbles. But she challenged the hypnotherapist some more. 'But I still know I don't have a yacht?' she said.

'No, but if you keep saying you have then the mind will play catch up and start finding ways to correct the dissonance between not having and having.'

The author said, 'I guess this is where standing up and saying affirmations out loud becomes powerful. Because word puts out a stronger pulse of energy than thought and therefore makes you move forwards.'

'Yes,' the hynotherapist agreed. 'People make negative affirmations all day long. They say 'I have no money. I feel tired or depressed or ill and scared of spiders'. They say 'I don't have the confidence to ask someone out on a date, go for promotion at work' or 'I need to sit down and have a cigarette'. And all of this is just affirmation ' but negative affirming, instead of the positive. That's why hypnotherapy is powerful. It corrects problematic thought patterns and replaces it with something positive.'

What really stood out for the coach in this conversation was this: people are making negative affirmations all day long and that creates a problematic thought pattern and destroys any hopes of getting the things they desire.

It is really important here to make clear how powerful affirmations are. It is all very well, using my example of saying, 'I have a yacht', but when the negative kicks in, 'but I don't', we have to catch it and not allow it to manifest and we also have to kick out that negative talk, 'I have no money, I'm tired - ' because all this creates is more lack of money and more tiredness.

What can you do?

1. Write yourself an affirmation for something that you would like to bring into your life. When you say it out loud notice what self-talk occurs immediately afterwards. Is it positive or negative?

2. If you have any negative talk after an affirmation, practice catching yourself and then immediately make that positive.