Self-Affirmations: What They Are & How To Make Them Work For You
June 22, 2010 No CommentsFor any of you who are unfamiliar with this term, “self-affirmation” statements are scripts that we repeat to ourselves every day. They can be positive or negative, and as the days, weeks and years go by, those thoughts become ingrained in our minds and beliefs.
An important point to make is that, if those thoughts tend to be positive, your life will reflect more positive back. Those who have more negative scripts tend to have more negativity in their lives. Just watch the news, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
However, even for the negative ones, they usually won’t end up on the evening news, but their lives will oftentimes be just plain miserable and void. It can affect your personal life, your work life, your social life, relationships, and can lead to depression. It’s no wonder that the rate of depression keeps climbing.
So, how can we fix this problem? We need to literally reprogram our minds.
Did you know that when you perform an action or think a thought, the brain creates physical pathways? The more you think that thought or perform that action, the deeper the physical groove gets in the brain, which is how a habit is formed. The deepest pathways in your brain are the ones that it will choose to take. If you choose a different action and keep repeating that one, and eventually stop the other action entirely, the pathway to that habit will eventually disappear. Cool, huh?
In order to form new habits, we simply change the pattern to something else and keep repeating that pattern until your brain automatically picks the new habit over the old one. This process takes time and patience. Habits are not easy to break.
So let’s start putting together some positive self-affirmations! They can come in several forms including a single word such as “intelligent,” a phrase like “enjoy good health,” or a statement, “My family will benefit from my relaxing more.” To get you started, I will give you a mixture of examples.
• Nothing is worth losing my sanity over.
• Seize the opportunity.
• I deserve to love and be loved.
• Beautiful.
• I face each new day as a race to be won.
• Take action.
• There are beautiful things happening in my life daily.
• Successful.
Think of things you would like to be reality or characteristics you would like to have and then turn those into affirmations.
For example, if you would like to be more confident, you could make an affirmation that says, “I am very confident with who I am.” Or if you want to be more athletic, “I enjoy being active and have lots of energy!”
The key is to put your affirmations in past-tense form, as if they have already happened. Instead of saying, “I will be thin,” say, “I am thin.” The more you implement these into your language, thoughts, and beliefs, the more you will become them.
Why? Because your brain doesn’t know the difference. It doesn’t know what size you are. It doesn’t know what your personality is. But it’s an amazing piece of God-given machinery that will co-operate with the thoughts that run through your mind.
If you want to achieve success and you repeat your affirmations and believe them, you will begin to see some amazing transformations. Remember, you need to take action, though. Don’t just expect things to appear out of thin air. It takes work and patience to transform your thoughts, especially if you are a highly negative person. It is possible, though.
Here’s a homework suggestion for you:
Write a single positive affirmation on thirty 3 x 5 index cards and put them in a recipe box. Take one card out each day and read it to yourself out loud three times. Envision the details of the affirmation already being in place. This card is your affirmation for the day. When you get to the last card start again.
To make this daily affirmation process grow, write out thirty different affirmations for each month of the year. Keep the 360 cards in a recipe box and continually use the collection year after year, adding new affirmations as you need them and removing ones that may no longer apply.
I have found it is also very helpful to place affirmations in various places like the dashboard of your car, your purse or wallet, on the bathroom mirror, bedroom door, near the phone, or other places where you will see them often. Don’t let them stay in one place too long, though, or they’ll just become part of the scenery and you won’t notice them anymore.
“One comes to believe whatever one repeats to oneself sufficiently often, whether the statement be true or false. It comes to be a dominating thought in one’s mind.” — Robert Collier
What affirmations have worked best for you and what was the result? Your comments are welcome!
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