Learn how to harness the power of positive affirmations to climb out of a negative mindset and get your mind into a positive, constructive, and creative mindset.
“Take positive care of your mind, and it would surely take positive care of your life.”
Did you know that your mind affects your actions far more than any other physical part of your body? Do you often feel like an overwhelmingly negative force is trying to prevent you from achieving your goals? Do you often hold thoughts like:
- “Why does my chief want me to run the presentation? I’m a horrible public speaker, and I’ll just embarrass the team.”
- “I’m never going to be able to do this job; I’m simply not smart enough.”
- “I wish I could stick up for myself on the job. I let the others get over my ideas. I’m never going to get ahead.”
Many of us bring negative thoughts like these, and sometimes more frequently than necessary. When we think like this, our confidence, frame of mind, and outlook can really become negative, too.
The issue with negative thoughts is that they almost always become self-fulfilling omens.
We talk ourselves into assumptions that we’re not so good, and, as a result, these thoughts drag down our personal lives, our careers, or our relationships.
Did you know that if we intentionally do the opposite and use positive thoughts about ourselves, the result would be just as powerful but, at the same time, far more willing and worthy?
In this article, we’ll show you how you can use the power of positive affirmations to drive positive changes in your life.
Transforming Negative Self Talk With Positive Affirmation
“You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”
Self-talk is the internal dialogue within your subconscious mind. It starts right from childhood, impacting your various life experiences. This negative inner dialogue breeds negative behavior, responses, and actions. It may cause a long-lasting effect with unfavorable and even adverse impacts on your life quality.
Our subconscious mind does not recognize the difference between positive and negative thoughts. Whether positive or negative, it simply manifests the thoughts inside our heads into our reality.
What’s worst is that research reveals that 80% of our self-talk is negative or self-critical.
Fortunately, you can modify negative self-talk habits and trigger positive life changes by harnessing the power of positive affirmations. By using them, you feed your mind with positive thoughts, and your inner self-talk becomes even more empowering. As a result, you become capable of creating and manifesting more of what you desire in your life.
Positive affirmations are fantastic tools to counteract negative self-talk, negative thoughts, and beliefs and reprogram your mind for the better
What Are Affirmations, and How Do They Work?
“The quality of your life depends on just two things: the quality of your communication with the world inside of you, and the quality of your communication with the world outside of you.”
Affirmations are positive, empowering statements that can help you overcome all self-sabotaging and negative thoughts
Affirmations are cautiously designed to deliver the most impact. When you say them, listen or think them, they become the thoughts that shape your reality. You start implanting them in your mindset and energy field only by working with them regularly.
Research has shown that about 80% of the 50,000 subconscious thoughts you have in a day are negative ones. That is a lot of negativity! Affirmations make you intentionally aware of your thoughts. So when you consciously think positive thoughts, it is easier to control the negative ones that are always threatening to take over.
Every word vibrates differently, and positive affirmations are with high vibrational frequency
You charge your energy field with the new positive vibration that affirmations bring. And this new vibration act as a magnet in your reality, attracting and encouraging new things to arise and happen.
Positive, high vibrational thoughts will draw positive outcomes, while negative ones will pull up negative.
You might think that affirmations are unrealistic “wishful thinking,” but try looking at them as a simple method that has the power to supercharge your conscious and subconscious mind. You’re reprogramming your thinking patterns and start vibrating differently, but mainly you start thinking and acting with much more success and effectiveness. And studies really confirm that.
For example, studies suggest that affirmations can help you perform better at work. By researchers, spending just a few minutes thinking about your best qualities before a high-pressure meeting (for example, a performance review) can calm down your nervousness, increase your confidence, and enhance your chances of success. [1]
Positive affirmations may also help to decrease the effects of stress. In one study, a short affirmation exercise elevated the problem-solving abilities of “chronically stressed” individuals to the same level as those with low stress. [2]
Furthermore, affirmations can help people overcome low self-esteem, low motivation, depression, and other mental health conditions. [3] And they have been shown to stimulate specific areas in our brains that trigger positive changes in our overall health.
A later study indicates that a stronger sense of self-worth and self-esteem makes you more likely to improve your inner sense of well-being. [4] So, for example, if you’re worried that you eat too much and don’t get enough exercise, you can use positive affirmations to reprogram your habits and change your behavior.
To affirm is to state something positively. So an affirmation is firmly stating a positive thought and assertively declaring that it is a truth.
A Word Of Caution! Affirmations And Low Self-Esteem May Don’t Work Well With Each Other!
Canadian scientist Dr. Joanne Wood and her squad at the University of Waterloo performed an experiment. Where they asked the participants to list positive and negative thoughts about themselves, they noticed that those with down self-esteem were in a better mood when they were allowed to have negative thoughts about themselves. Yes, the subjects were in a better mood by thinking negative thoughts, than they were when asked to focus on positive affirmations. In fact, these people felt better when they spoke badly about themselves.
The researchers concluded that positive praise and positive affirmations, such as “My life is beautiful” or “I am loveable just the way I am” was in strong dissonance with the mindset of those with low self-esteem and low self worth.
As result this led to feelings of conflict and just feeling bad. Which then cause more negative thoughts about themselves.
How Make Affirmations Work Better In Moments With Low Self-Esteem?
Dr. Wood recommends slowing things down. And first, practice “going neutral” and then “going positive.”
For example, instead of: “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”
Try: “I have also had worse, but I have had better days. Today I am OK.”
Rather, “I am beautiful, happy, and love myself.” You can use: “I am working on accepting me as I am.”
Two more ideas: frame the affirmation in the future tense or as a question.
In place of: “I am whole and complete just the way I am.”
Try: “I will becom whole and complete just the way I am.”
Or: “Why I am whole and complete just the way I am?”
By introducing neutral statements or turning the statements into questions and building them into the future tense, your brain does not have to deal with the confrontation of bad feelings to maintain the status quo.
Instead, all the old neural pathways that make up your pattern of negative thinking can take a rest while smoothly a new path of neutrality develops inside your mind.
My Way To Beat Negative Self-talk
If you have any of the following thoughts, know that your negative mindset is operating its agenda:
- It’s so hard to…
- It has always been like this…
- I always do this…
- I’ve never been able to…
- I can’t…
- I don’t want to anyway…
The above thoughts are called “closed systems,” and they reinforce your negative mindset. When you detect these thoughts, first acknowledge them without judgement. When you note that you are noticing these types of thoughts, you can now begin to re-pattern them.
Shortly, you’ll find that you can re-pattern these thoughts more and more soon as they come up.
My favorite method to re-pattern thoughts like these is by using the THREE magic words. The next time you think disempowering thoughts, catch yourself and simply add the short sentence at the end– “up until now”!
For example:
- I’ve never been able to do this… up until now.
- I have always done this mistake… up until now.
- It’s been so hard to make that… up until now.
- It has always been worse like this… up until now.
- I didn’t want to.. up until now.
By doing this simple but powerful step, you re-pattern your thoughts to be more positive and start to regain your inherent power to write the story of your life, anew, beginning at this moment.
How to Use Positive Affirmations?
You can use affirmations everywhere you’d like to see positive changes take place in your life:
- Raise your confidence
- Improve your self-esteem
- Control negative feelings such as anger, frustration, or impatience.
- Improve your focus and productivity
- Finish projects you’ve started.
- Overcoming a bad habit.
Affirmations may be more effective when you practice them first thing in the morning.
When you’re reading, speaking, writing, and listening in the morning, your brain is fresh and ready for new ideas. As opposed to the rest of the day, morning is an easier time to think clearly and put your thoughts on the written page.
Five reasons why do we have to practice affirmations in the morning?
#1: When you’re reading, speaking, writing, and listening in the morning, your brain is fresh and ready for new ideas.
#2: Following this technique in the morning is the best way to alleviate your mind of negative thoughts before they have a possibility to take root.
#3: You will be able to perform on your ideas much more efficaciously before the press of daily events pushes your ideas out of your head.
#4: Unlike the rest of the day, the morning is the best time to think clearly and accept new concepts and beliefs.
#5: During this personal moment, you won’t be disrupted, so you’re free to read, speak, write and listen to whatever you want.
Affirmations are great when setting personal goals. Once you’ve determined the goals you’d like to achieve, empowering statements can help you keep yourself motivated to achieve them.
The power of positive affirmations lies in working with them regularly. It’s helpful to say loader your affirmations several times a day, have them pop up in your notifications, or listen to them while driving or walking.
- Aronson E. (1969). The theory of cognitive dissonance: a current perspective. In Berkowitz, L. (editor). Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. New York: Academic Press, 1–34.
- Bloch, D. (2015). Positive self-talk for children: Teaching self-esteem through affirmations. BookBaby.
- Alexander, R. (2011). 5 Steps To Make Affirmations Work For You. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-wise-open-mind/201108/5-steps-make-affirmations-work-you
- Beck, A. T. (1964). Thinking and depression: II. Theory and therapy. Archives of General Psychiatry, 10(6), 561-571.
- Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The psychology of change: Self-affirmation and social psychological intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 333-371.
- Sherman, D. K., Cohen, G. L., Nelson, L. D., Nussbaum, A. D., Bunyan, D. P., & Garcia, J. (2009). Affirmed yet unaware: Exploring the role of awareness in the process of self-affirmation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 745-764.
- Staner, L. (2003). Sleep and anxiety disorders. Dialogues in clinical neuroscience, 5(3), 249.
- Cascio, C. N., O’donnell, M. B., Tinney, F. J., Lieberman, M. D., Taylor, S. E., Strecher, V. J., & Falk, E. B. (2015). Self-affirmation activates brain systems associated with self-related processing and reward and is reinforced by future orientation. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11(4), 621-629.
- Cooke, R., Trebaczyk, H., Harris, P., & Wright, A.J. (2014) Self-affirmation promotes physical activity. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 36(2), 217–223.
- Critcher, C. R., & Dunning, D. (2015). Self-affirmations provide a broader perspective on self-threat. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(1), 3-18.
- Encyclopedia Britannica. (2019). Mantra. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/mantra.
- Falk, E. B., O’Donnell, M. B., Cascio, C. N., Tinney, F., Kang, Y., Lieberman, M. D., … & Strecher, V. J. (2015). Self-affirmation alters the brain’s response to health messages and subsequent behavior change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(7), 1977-1982.
- Harris, P. R., Mayle, K., Mabbott, L., & Napper, L. (2007). Self-affirmation reduces smokers’ defensiveness to graphic on-pack cigarette warning labels. Health Psychology, 26, 437–446.
- Koole, S.L., Smeets, K., van Knippenberg, A., Dijksterhuis, A. (1999). The cessation of rumination through self-affirmation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 111–125.