Affirmations Spark Positive Change
By: Bridget Webber
Tags: Mental Health, Psychology, Lifestyle, Personal Development, Self Improvement

Do you use affirmations? You either love them or hate them. If the latter’s true, perhaps you haven’t found any that resonate with you yet.

Or, maybe you’ve used unhelpful, poorly worded ones. (It’s so easy to write them in unproductive ways unless you understand the process).

Whether you enjoy affirmations or they annoy you, it doesn’t hurt to know how to word them effectively (they are less frustrating when they work).

How affirmations work

Affirmations are phrases to say aloud or silently to support your personal growth. Their aim is to boost your confidence and self-belief.

Studies show phrases you repeat often, including negative self-talk, become embedded in your mind. Repetitive thoughts and actions wire your brain, helping you forge beliefs.

If you want to change your views — maybe they limit you for example — you can install new helpful information to rewire your mindset.

You might want to use affirmations to boost motivation, change an unwanted habit, or increase self-esteem.

Keys to a helpful affirmation

Plenty of people jumped on the affirmation bandwagon when using them became popular. Many were put off them fast, though, since they didn’t understand how to make them effective.

Affirmations work, even poorly worded ones, when repeated often. But, you don’t want to rewire your mindset negatively.

The phrase “I am a millionaire” (used by many) makes me wince, for example. There’s no point attempting to fool your brain by telling it lies. If you aren’t a millionaire, constantly saying you are won’t alter your bank balance or predispose you to make more money.

Indeed, it could have a negative influence. You are wired to question new data and revolt against known lies.

Each time you say you’re a millionaire, but you’re not, you experience friction. Plus, you are reminded about what you don’t have and fuel a negative state of mind.

The same goes if you tell yourself you are confident when you aren’t confident, beautiful when you don’t feel beautiful, or healthy when you’re unwell.

Affirmations must be believable

Rather than bamboozle your intelligence with phrases you can’t entertain, create affirmations that open up possibilities. Let them construct doorways to your potential.

If you want to increase your confidence to earn more money, for instance, think of a time when you created more wealth than you have now.

Or, look for a role model — someone who didn’t have much money, but increased their prosperity.

Doing so will help you forge an affirmation you trust; one that’s believable and won’t be rejected by your psyche.

Use your current beliefs to aid honest affirmations. For example:

“What others have done before me, I can do too.” Your psyche won’t rebel against the statement because it makes sense.

Or, you might say “I have increased my wealth before, and can do so again.”

Health

I often meet people who blindly create well-meaning affirmations intended to improve their health.

But they don’t make them believable and their mind tosses them out like garbage.

Unhelpful health-based examples include: “I am full of health and well-being,” and “my health increases every day.”

They sound positive, don’t they? But your mind will scoff at them if they don’t contain enough truth to be believable.

If your health is poor, telling yourself you are healthy isn’t useful. Instead, look for improvements, even if they’re tiny, and focus on them. Create affirmations from them.

If, for instance, you had a superb day health-wise recently, see how you made it possible with helpful behavior and create an affirmation to support repeating that behavior.

It might go something like this:

“I build energy and heal fast when I listen to my body, resting if it tells me to do so.”

Or:

“When I stop fighting discomfort and focus on ease, my pain lessens.”

Such affirmations might not sound huge. But that’s because they are little steps on the way to something bigger.

As you progress toward a goal, you can change them to match your growth and they will take you a few inches further. Your mind will find this acceptable and support you.

Calm your monkey mind

You might have guessed by now that phrases such as “I am calm and happy” don’t always work. Not if your mind races and you’re upset.

If your thoughts are like trains steaming along a track, pretending you are as peaceful as a water lily won’t help. Again, look for elements of truth to weave into affirmations.

If you can recall when you were calm, and remember how relaxed your body felt and so forth, the affirmation “I access a sense of calm now and stress fades away” is helpful.

“I am not my thoughts,” “I stand back from self-talk and witness it,” and “thoughts are just background noise,” are effective when you want to stop inner chatter getting the better of you.

Focus

When you live in the moment, you are in the zone. You are comfortable, but it’s not your comfort zone you experience, it’s a state of flow when the past and future don’t exist for a while. You focus with ease and precision because you are fully here.

A mantra, or affirmation to help, is likely to be succinct. Long statements that trail take you into your head and away from the present.

“I notice,” “here,” “grounded,” “wake up,” and “aware” are constructive snippets of positivity: The idea is not to travel into your imagination but to jump-start attentiveness.

Other affirmations sound prettier. “I am fully here and aware of everything,” although positive, isn’t instant. You need to jolt your senses and awaken to the moment rather than become poetic or create a literary gem.

Better still wire your mindset before you need an affirmation. For example, stamp your feet and repeat “wake up” now and then. You’ll train your mind to awaken and aid focus with practice. When the time comes to use your affirmation, you won’t need to stamp your feet, words will suffice.

Here are the affirmations mentioned (and a few more) in list form

“What others have done before me, I can do too.”

“I have increased my wealth before, and can do so again.”

“I build energy and heal fast when I listen to my body, resting if it tells me to do so.”

“When I stop fighting discomfort and focus on ease, my pain lessens.”

“I access a sense of calm now and stress fades away”

“I am not my thoughts,”

“I stand back from self-talk and witness it,”

“Thoughts are just background noise”

“I notice”

“Here”

“Grounded”

“Wake up”

“Aware”

“Gratitude increases my happiness”

“I look with kindness”

“I reap rewards by supporting my health”

“I focus on what works for me”

“My gifts are for sharing”

“My gift is my offering to the world”

“I am in charge of my emotions”

“I look for positivity and it grows”

“I can let go of what doesn’t serve my greatest good.”

I hope you find my examples helpful. If you create your own affirmations, remember to make them believable and access an element of truth, expanding a little as you progress, and you’ll spark positive change.