Lets talk affirmations! Affirmations are just words/phrases that you say to yourself to support yourself and to stay centered in positive self worth. Many people use affirmations for personal development and to help them meet their life goals. You can also use affirmations to build resilience and combat stress.
Whether it’s a one-off stress like having to give a presentation or an ongoing stressful issue, you can create the right affirmations to support you through. Affirmations will help you deal better with current stress, and over time, prevent future anxiety.
While there are some people that discount the power of affirmations, there are others who have seen great benefit from using them, including myself. You can also find research that shows increased activity in key regions of the brain’s self-processing (medial prefrontal cortex + posterior cingulate cortex) and valuation (ventral striatum + ventral medial prefrontal cortex) systems when reflecting on future-oriented core values (compared with everyday activities).
Basically, the regular use of affirmations create new pathways in the brain. Also, on a basic level, we, as humans have inner dialog. For many of us, a lot of that dialog can be negative, so why not turn it around. Since we are going to be thinking, and talking to ourselves anyway, lets make it positive.
How might a person go about beginning an affirmation routine?
First, it would be good to dump any subconscious negative beliefs about affirmations. Also, you never have to use the online general affirmation tracks you can find, but you can use them to get an idea on how it can work. The point is the make the phrases you stay real to who you are and your situation. Well, how does one do that? Lets see…
1. Know Your Negative Enemy
Identifying your negative thoughts is the first step in working out the best affirmations for you and your situation. Take a moment to think of all the beliefs that come up when you think about your stressful event. Do you worry about not knowing what to say at a party, or freezing while you try to give a presentation? Write down every negative thought that pops into your head. Make the conscious decision to move away from those negative beliefs.
2. Turn the Negatives into Positives
Now you have your list of negative thoughts; you can take each one and turn it into a positive. Make strong positive statements and remind yourself of times in the past when you coped well in similar situations.
When you develop your affirmations, tie them back to times when you have succeeded in the past. If you can’t think of any, ask your partner, friend, or colleague to help you. Likely they’ll have a much more positive view of your skills and achievements than you do!
Write down some encouraging phrases to get you through, like ‘I’m feeling stressed, but I will be OK,’ ‘I can do this,’ ‘When this is over, I will be so proud of myself.’
3. Keep Your Affirmations Realistic
Affirmations are not magic. Keep your affirmations in proportion to what you can do and how you feel. If they are too ambitious, they can make you feel more anxious than before. And if you have a misstep or you fail, then you’ll feel even worse than before.
For example, maybe you get anxious about public speaking, whether it’s giving a presentation or having a job interview. Your affirmations will help you even more if you know you have done everything possible to be prepared.
If you worry about getting stage fright or going blank, prepare every aspect of your speech or presentation. Remind yourself that you know how to do this, you know your subject.
You can anticipate what might go wrong and work out strategies to prevent or deal with it, from having spare notes in case the technology fails to having a glass of water nearby if you feel faint.
Overview
Affirmations that support you, highlight the best of who you are and your most positive traits will go a long way in helping stay up when you feel that down slope. While this is not a one size fits all type of thing, and for some, affirmations may not resonate with them, its a powerful way to boost and maintain your sense of self worth.
If you are the extroverted confident type like people with heavy Aries, Leo, life path 1 or 3 for example, affirmations will help keep your passion tank full. If you are more introverted and reflective like Pisces, or life path 7 or 2, affirmations can bring you up and remind you of your worth and your gifts to the world. So, try it, and see if it works.
When you book a reading with me, we can go over your chart and get deeper into helping you plan and create your personal balance so you can reduce those stress levels.