We've all read about self-affirmations, so you might believe that you can talk exaggeratedly about your capabilities until what you claim becomes true.
You might try it and it won't work; you might think positive, upbeat, and powerful thoughts as you look in the mirror, but there won't be any reaction at all. You might not feel better, might not use your day well, might not feel like you're becoming who you say you are, and you might try it again the next day and the day after that. Eventually, you might give up this habit because it hasn't worked.
Thankfully, self-affirmations are effective, but not in the way you might expect.
Repeating Self-Affirmations Makes Things Worse
The goal of repeating self-affirmations is to feel positive about your life, to challenge yourself, to reach a higher level of discipline, joy, and strength, and not to feel resentful.
However, one study found that affirmations like, "I am lovable, I am strong, or I am wonderful," backfires by making you feel bad about describing yourself as having qualities you don't.
Self-affirmations, however, don't always make things worse and occasionally have no effect at all. In one study, the first group of participants was instructed to repeat encouraging words on their own accord, while the second group was made to repeat them.
Performance and self-confidence improved for participants in the first group, while benefits were noticeably less for participants in the second group. This implies that in order to succeed, you must be willing to use self-affirmations and have faith that they will be effective.
That's okay, and there's nothing wrong with fooling your brain to believe things that will make you stronger, especially if those thoughts increase performance and self-assurance over the long term. Fortunately, self-affirmations can affect you if you are more accurate and honest.
Make Effective Use of Self-Affirmations
It doesn't help much to repeat short, meaningless phrases to yourself to make you feel "strong" and "lovable." In fact, using these affirmations can backfire and make you feel like you're not who you claim to be.
As a result, you need to give it a little credibility.
As an example, we can say, "I woke up at six this morning and I'm strong," or, we can be more accurate to make it more powerful, "I woke up at six this morning and I'm going to seize the day like never before."
So, you've given the affirmation more credibility by providing evidence that you are who you say you are, that you rose at six in the morning, and that you should be prepared to seize the day like never before.
This will help you overcome the negative thoughts that usually undermine the power of these affirmations. You now have something tangible to hold on to as proof that you are a person of good manners. Similarly, adding accuracy to your affirmations makes them more realistic, like: "I will seize the day like never before," rather than "I am strong." So, how does power manifest itself? What exactly do you mean?
Seizing the day like never before makes you feel productive, efficient, and even powerful, and it leads to greater clarity about how you should feel and what you should do after repeating your affirmation.
In Conclusion
Finally, here are some examples of self-affirmations that you can use:
- I am (the action I take), and I do what I set out to do
- I am (the action I took), and I feel like I got a lot done.
- I am (the action I performed), and my mind is in excellent condition.
- I am (the action you take), and I am excellent at making others feel good.
- I am (the action I took), and I am dedicated to meeting my financial objectives.
- I am (the action I took), and I have the utmost respect for myself.
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