Positive Affirmations That Work! Why and how I use positive affirmations

Doing positive affirmations for 30 seconds in the morning can’t possibly counter the 24 hours of self-berating most of us do. We are so damn hard on ourselves.

Positive Affirmations Sometimes Don’t Work

We are so pervasively hard on ourselves that we don’t even notice the thoughts as negative self-judgments, we just think of them as truths. Not giving our time and energy into changing this negativity causes many other problems: Lost dreams, lost relationships, lost trust, physical ailments, spiritual isolation, and tons of emotional pain.

One problem is that when we talk negatively about ourselves, we then feel compelled to defend ourselves. And our mind gets stuck in the conflict of both blaming ourselves and defending ourselves. Blame Game. 

Practicing positive affirmations will help change the way you are thinking. But you have to ‘kind of believe’ your positive affirmations for them to work. So you have to do them in increments. I write about this in heavy detail in the last chapter of my book.

How I use positive affirmations

Here’s an example of how I used positive affirmations in my past.

I’ve always been a busy person. That’s just how I like life: FULL. I love learning new things and I want to try everything. So I’m busy. Several years ago, I found myself a busy working mom of young babies and noticed that I had a mantra in my head, “There’s not enough time. I can’t catch up.” My mind played this one on repeat.

Then, I realized how that was impacting my day. I would spill my tea and have to change my pants when I was already late leaving for work. I made paperwork mistakes that took time to correct. I’d get headaches and stomach aches from the stress of always being so behind. Not good.

I decided to change that and began to consciously notice when I was saying the above and replace it with: “There’s more than enough time for everything that I want to do.”  I repeated this over and over. And soon, I stopped being stressed about time. I became exponentially more productive, still never “caught up.” But caught up doesn’t exist in a busy family life. There’s always a new pile of laundry, always more food to prepare, and rooms to clean, always new school projects and papers and new bills to pay.

Why stress about not being caught up when being between projects is the regular state of life? I used to think that I had to be stressed to motivate myself to get things done. But now I realize stress is counter-productive for me. (And many of the people I speak to.) Anxiety, too.

I also go into detail about the hows and whys of positive affirmations this week’s video:

Positive Affirmations That Work

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You are worth being treated well, even by your SELF.

Sometimes we’ve been abused in the past and even long after the abuse, we pick up the mantle and continue degrading ourselves long after the abuser is gone.

It is time to let go of the past. And start being kinder to yourself. Get help from the Stop Negative Thinking with Strategic Affirmations Class.

Try some of these first step affirmations:

1. It is possible, I can forgive myself for this.
2. It is possible that I can do something that I can’t see right now.
3. I see some good in me.
4. There are things that I do well.

In the comments, write an affirmation that you use.