Affirmations are a positive rephrasing of negative thoughts and statements. If you ‘exercise’ your mind by repeating these positive statements daily, and believe them, you will improve the ‘fitness’ of your mind and change your outlook.
For example , your friend invites you to join them for a coffee. Instead of thinking the negative thought “I won’t go because they don’t really want me there”, you could instead think “my friend invited me to catch up with them so they really want to see me”. Over time you can train your mind to be more positive.
The main qualifier is that your affirmations be achievable. It’s not necessary for them to be true at the time of writing them, but you will set yourself up for failure by writing something that is highly unlikely to happen like “I can rule my country”, unless of course you are in the line of succession or have a horde of rebels ready for a military takeover.
I was very sceptical about the benefit of writing affirmations, but I decided I couldn’t knock it until I tried it because it is widely lauded as a successful cognitive technique for treating depression. I took my beautiful Marie-en-Rose journal by Torryn Marie and began what I will call my positivity journal. If an affirmation is particularly meaningful for me, I set it out as a whole page. For instance, in response to experiencing gaslighting I created the page that said “I know and trust my own mind”.
I can say after two months I’ve found this daily practice very effective and I’ve included it in my miracle morning routine. If I’m upset or uncertain about anything, I find an affirmation to counter any negative thoughts I’m having about myself. I slowly find my self-beliefs are changing and becoming more positive. I really think they can work for anyone that takes the process seriously. I hope they make a difference for you.
If you need inspiration there are gazillions of examples of affirmations online. If I can’t think of a good way to phrase one I simply search with ‘affirmations’ and then a word like ‘fear’ or ‘anxiety’. If you want to decorate your journal, there are many decorated ones that you could print out to stick in.
