Important Note: This article has nothing to do with religion or certain religious beliefs but it rather explains how prayers affect you psychologically with disregard to your beliefs.

Can prayer help you succeed, lose weight or get better grades?

Before I can tell you the answer to this question, I first need to tell you few facts about the way the mind works.

Indifference is a feeling a person gets when he no longer believes that his plans are going to work.
Procrastination can be caused by indifference in some cases.

In other words, when a person loses hope on his plans but a part of him refuses to admit that hope was lost he might become indifferent then procrastinate.

Now if someone started praying and asking God for help he automatically starts to believe that hope wasn't lost. The amount of hope a person gets depends on the strength of his beliefs. As a result this hope fuels the person's actions and he becomes more likely to succeed.

Prayers vs Affirmations

The first type of affirmations is the case where a person repeats something that he doesn't believe in and as a result his mind responds to this self deception with even more bad feelings. saying something like "I am becoming more confident everyday" could backfire at you as your subconscious mind will provide you with hundreds of clues that show that you weren't confident as soon as you repeat this affirmation.

The second type of affirmations is the one that makes sense to the mind and as a result gives the person a strong push towards his goals. For example an affirmation like "I will keep trying until i make it" will sound much more logical to your mind and the possibility of rejecting it becomes less.

Now prayer can be classified as a special case of the second type where your beliefs about what you are repeating is much more stronger.

Prayers can be considered a type of affirmations that helps you change your beliefs about your ability to succeed and so increases your chances of success.

All the success stories of successful people have one common thing which is the strong belief they had in themselves with disregard to the efforts of those who were trying to put them down.

In other words, if you found a source that can supply you with that solid belief in yourself then certainly you will succeed. Now what prayer does is that it acts as that source (provided that you believe in your prayers) and helps you believe that you will make it.

Once you believe you will make it your mindset changes, your behaviour follows and the achievements happen.