Learn how regular affirmations can benefit your life, mental health, help you overcome negativity and become more confident.
“A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks, he becomes”, Mahatma Gandhi.
This is just one of the many famous quotes by people of influence the world over, correlating the power of your thoughts with not only who you are today but who you eventually become.
That said, negative thoughts are a sure way to self-sabotage. They put a damper on your confidence, self-esteem, and general well-being.
Positive thinking, on the other hand, is a good self-help strategy. Research shows that positive thoughts help us to cope better in stressful situations and have a better outlook on life.
Now, there is a strong connection between positive thinking and affirmation. Affirmation doubles as the antidote for negative thoughts and the building block for positive thinking.
This means that whether you want to combat negative thought patterns or just need to boost your self-concept, affirmations can help you to do all that and more. I have expounded on 7 benefits of affirmations.
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First off though, here’s everything else you need to know about positive affirmations.
What Are Affirmations?
Also referred to as positive affirmations, affirmations are positive statements or quotes said repeatedly in order to dispel negative feelings and emotions such as self-doubt, low self-esteem, worry, anger, frustration, and fear.
When done right, affirmations help to gradually transform your subconscious thoughts from negative to positive. This consequently amplifies the confidence in your ability to accomplish your goals.
How Positive Affirmations Work
When you keep on repeating and hearing something positive, you start believing it. With time, you will likely start getting rid of negative thought patterns, embracing more positive thoughts, and behaving in ways that help to make your affirmations a reality.
A Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience study sought to examine the effects of self-affirmation on a person’s neural activity.
Researchers concluded that affirmation increased activity in significant regions of the brain systems that deal with self-related processing and reward. This eventually led to future-oriented positive behavioral change.
How To Use Positive Affirmations Effectively
While certain positive affirmations will work for many people, you have the best chance of success when your affirmations fall within the recommendations below.
Affirmations Should Be Self-Addressing And In The Present Tense
When affirmations begin with “I” or “My”, they are personal, relevant, and easier to own.
Further, keeping affirmations in the present creates an urgency that hastens the subsequent behavior change to increase your chances of success.
To illustrate this, compare these two affirmations; “I will be ready for this job in a year’s time” and “I have what it takes to qualify for this Job”.
While both affirmations point to the fact that the job could be a challenging one, the latter is likely to provoke you to work faster to make this a reality.
Positive Affirmations Should Be Specific And Achievable
Positive affirmations should be specific statements that focus on aspects of your life that you want to alter whether these are specific traits, negative thinking, or negative beliefs.
Once you identify this, ensure that the positive affirmation you choose is realistic and achievable.
Bouncing back from a bad breakup? Maybe.
Replacing the current CEO in your workplace? Maybe not so soon!
Affirmations Should Acknowledge Hardship
Practicing affirmations is not supposed to make you hide from reality or proceed in denial, if anything, both your feelings and the belief in your ability to weather the situation matter.
If, for example, you have a work project that is proving to be a bit challenging, simply saying “the project is easy-peasy” or “I am a successful person” might not exactly work magic on your self-confidence.
In contrast, acknowledging the gravity of the task and your ability to handle it with an affirmation like “The project is tough, but I have the skills and ability to tackle it’’ can kick your confidence a few notches higher.
Also, citing similar situations that you’ve already overcome serves as a good reminder of your abilities: “I have succeeded in other difficult projects and I will succeed in this one too”
Affirmations Need To Be Seen, Said Out Loud, And Repeated Many Times Over
This may call on you to practice positive affirmations daily when you wake up, before you go to sleep, and a few times in between.
To make practicing self-affirmations easier, you can make use of sticky notes or note cards that you can put on areas of your home that you use every day, use phone apps, or set reminders on your phone to prompt you.
Positive Affirmations Work With Positive Action
This simply means that until you put in the work and the time, beliefs born of the positive affirmations will not become a reality. What is it for you?
If your affirmation is about getting through a financial hurdle, for instance, have you taken action to address it? Whether it is picking up an extra shift at work, starting a side hustle, or monetizing an opportunity at your disposal, you need to put that idea into motion.
The Benefits Of Affirmation
By influencing your thinking, positive affirmations can change long-standing patterns and cause positive changes that manifest in the benefits below.
1. Stress Relief
The response you have towards stressors in your life determines the kind of impact you suffer. Stressors have a positive side; they can keep us on our guard and motivate us to counter dangerous situations.
However, if they run too long without relief, stressors can arouse all manner of negative effects and cause emotional, mental, physical, and social health problems.
Positive self-affirmations in the face of stressful circumstances have been shown to lessen the negative impact and give stress relief.
2. Positive Physical Behavior Change
When your thought patterns have morphed in a positive way after practicing self-affirmations, what follows are actions to help you realize the beliefs you have formed. This also makes you more receptive to ideas that are beneficial to you.
An article of the Journal of Sports and Exercise Psychology documented a study that confirmed that affirmation can promote physical activity. Out of a group of 80 young people, some were randomly allocated an affirmation then the whole group was given content on physical activity and health to read.
Upon follow-up, the self-affirmed participants showed significant improvement in actual physical activity, as well as better attitudes and intentions towards physical activity.
3. Improved Self-Esteem
Self-esteem is all about self-love and the confidence you have in your own self-worth and abilities. Daily positive affirmations draw your mind to the best of yourself and repeatedly keep it there.
By doing so, you are diminishing negative thinking and negative self-talk which helps to restore feelings of adequacy and competence in your life. This helps to enhance your personal narrative and gives your self-esteem a boost.
4. Academic Achievement
In an experimental study, the Grade Point Average (GPA) of students who had a sense of not belonging in college continued to decline for over 3 semesters and more. In contrast, the performance of similar students who were involved in a writing activity to self-affirm their core values improved over time.
This concludes that though struggling with a low sense of belonging can negatively affect performance, own affirmations can salvage the situation for better results.
In addition to better grades, affirmation is also linked to reduced academic stress, improved trust, and better behavior in students.
5. Positive Mood And Optimism
By reducing negative thoughts and replacing them with positive ones, daily affirmations foster an optimistic attitude.
Optimism helps you to see the good in every situation no matter how small and respond to the bad with hope and the expectation that you can still get a good outcome. An Optimistic outlook on life is associated with a positive mood.
6. Better Mental, Social, And Physical Health
Different people perceive and respond differently to information concerning health risks and for a significant part, with resistance.
This is despite the fact that such health messages are made readily available either one on one with health experts or via various media. Good examples include risks associated with poor diet, lack of exercise, and drug misuse.
If you find yourself struggling with this, health psychology research shows that positive affirmations can positively influence your acceptance of beneficial health risk messages as well as improve your intention to change, and your subsequent behavior.
This results in improved health, thanks to better medical and lifestyle decisions.
7. Better Problem Solving Abilities
The capacity of positive affirmations to improve problem-solving abilities rides on their stress relief benefit. Stress is detrimental to your brain’s cognitive ability or the ability to solve problems.
While positive affirmations are not a cure for stress, their role in stress reduction may lessen the impact of stress on your brain’s problem-solving performance.
When Positive Affirmations Don’t Seem to Work
Not every positive affirmation will bring positive changes and sometimes, this may stem from deeper issues or underlying mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression. In such instances, you may require other strategies that are best guided by a therapist.
Conclusion
Positive affirmation is a form of social-psychological intervention aimed at getting rid of undesirable thoughts, emotions, and traits in order to nurture positive thinking.
Substantial research shows that regular practice of self-affirmation positively influences how people cope with different circumstances resulting in a wide scope of benefits.
If this is something you would like to try, you shouldn’t expect to change from being a negative thinker to a positive one overnight.
Self-affirmation effects take time to kick in but you will eventually get there with practice.
