Positive Affirmations

Self-help books often promote the power of positive affirmations.

Everybody has heard of them, but the idea can seem incredibly awkward. Telling yourself how awesome you are can seem strange, but if that’s all you’re doing, there are more effective ways to go about it and if you’re a skeptic, it doesn’t hurt to understand how and why positive affirmations became so popular.

Positive affirmations are almost as easy to define as they are to practice. They are positive phrases or statements used to challenge negative thoughts.

Practicing positive affirmations can be extremely simple, and all you need to do is pick a phrase and repeat it to yourself.

You may choose to use positive affirmations to motivate yourself, encourage positive changes in your life, or boost your self-esteem. If you often find yourself getting caught up in negative self-talk, positive affirmations can be used against these often-subconscious patterns and replace them with more positive narratives.

Positive affirmations require regular practice if you want to make lasting, long-term changes to the ways that you think and feel. The good news is that the practice and popularity of positive affirmations are based on widely accepted and well-established psychological theory.

Positive statements, affirmations are designed to encourage an optimistic mindset. Optimism is a powerful thing. In terms of reducing negative thoughts, affirmations have been shown to help with the tendency to linger on negative experiences.

When we can deal with negative messages and replace them with positive statements, we can construct more adaptive, hopeful narratives about who we are and what we can accomplish.

Somethings I have discovered about affirmations:

You may not believe what you are saying at first but the more you hear it, yes even hearing it from yourself, the more you believe. Goes back to that whole “fake it til you make it.”

You may feel silly at first, but more people are do this than you think.

Say it like you mean it. Say it in a strong aggressive voice.

The main thing I would like you to take away from this is whether you believe it or not you are an amazing, beautiful, intelligent individual.  If there is anything that can help you know this…DO IT!