You can find positive affirmations online to use as your own. But every person may have unique struggles and issues they want to resolve. Speaking positive affirmations is a powerful technique when used correctly.
Sometimes writing your own positive affirmations leads to better results. Listening to your own words makes it easier to convince yourself to change and overcome low self-esteem or doubt. Of course, learning to write affirmations is crucial to getting more meaning behind your words.
Understanding Affirmations
You can think of affirmations as mantras. They’re powerful phrases or sentences that can help you rewire your inner beliefs. Whether generic or specific, the trick is to repeat them daily, preferably out loud.
Repetition helps positive affirmations change the way you view yourself or the world. And they’re beneficial to people who engage in negative self-talk. Changing personal beliefs, no matter how flawed, can’t be done without conditioning.
Daily affirmations can get you there and perhaps faster if you start writing your own.
Journaling Comes First
Before you start writing positive affirmations, it’s essential to begin journaling consistently. Journaling allows you to take a good look at your life, habits, and beliefs. It makes it easy to analyze various aspects of your life and identify sources of negativity.
Once you identify bad experiences or negative beliefs, you can start thinking of positive statements to counteract them. But this requires a commitment to journaling, especially on bad days. Even the most minor incident could bring out negative and detrimental emotions and beliefs.
Identifying them and clarifying what fuels your beliefs and behavior is crucial to creating the most effective affirmations.
Positivity Is Key
Language matters a lot when writing daily positive affirmations. Using negative words or evoking negative emotions is counterintuitive. The idea is to trick your subconscious into focusing on healthy, positive aspects of your health, status, goals, etc.
Avoid words like “never,” “impossible,” “hard,” and others that can trigger negative thoughts. Even when you write affirmations about an ailment or condition, attaching positive words is essential to rewire your brain.
Present Tense Is Powerful
Writing in the present and present continuous tenses is essential. Affirmations always come from a vision of how you want your life to be. However, you must put all desires and expectations in the present state. You have to make yourself believe you’re already experiencing the good fortune and success you want.
Putting yourself in a mindset revolving around tomorrow or next year’s success isn’t enough. Positive affirmations must have a sense of urgency. Delaying those positive changes in your life through affirmations tricks your subconscious into believing your goals aren’t vital.
Writing in the present and present continuous tense develops a stronger craving for success and will keep you focused on chasing and reaching your goals.
Focus on You
Your affirmations are for you and no one else. You’re not writing for your social group, relationship, family, etc. Affirmations are for your personal conditioning. Therefore, phrases like “I am” or “I have” are crucial for changing your profound inner beliefs.
Think about where you are in your journey or your current state of mind. Affirmations must serve your needs and not account for someone else’s feelings or beliefs. Adjust your statements to fit yourself.
Putting the focus on yourself makes it easier to affirm that you have something or can achieve something by acting.
Simplicity Helps
You can say a lot to yourself to influence your behavior and start making positive changes in your life. That’s why there’s no shortage of generic affirmations that people use every day. But here’s something you may not know about writing affirmations: Short and simple affirmations are the most impactful.
The best daily affirmations are straightforward, easy to memorize, and a breeze to repeat in front of the mirror. Making them more straightforward allows you to visualize goals well enough to stay focused.
Naturally, you will have an easier time finding the right words when writing positive affirmations. Brief statements shouldn’t take long to create, especially when journaling uncovers negative experiences, emotions, and beliefs. Emphasize important focus words and avoid fillers. It’s not a creative writing competition.
You’re looking for practicality and efficiency.
Think About Complementing Affirmations with Actions
Telling yourself something positive every day won’t necessarily bring it into existence. While you can trick your mind into avoiding negative emotions and thoughts, you still need to take action to make positive changes.
Thus, it’s essential to tailor affirmations around actionable mantras, not just intentions. They’re most powerful when they can help you take definitive action toward reaching your goals and improving your life.
Believe in the Power of Affirmations
You shouldn’t write a positive affirmation you’re unlikely to believe. While chasing your biggest goals and making significant changes is excellent, keep your writing realistic.
Affirmations are only as effective as your ability to believe them. And the same affirmations won’t be as effective through all stages in your life. For instance, people experiencing hardship, depression, and periods of bad luck benefit more from toned-down affirmations.
Why?
It’s easier to believe you can achieve your goals by taking it one step at a time than through overnight success. The power of positive affirmations can be highly contextual. Consider where you are in life and what you could actually believe.
There’s a big difference between saying you’re the best version of yourself and that you’re improving every day. People who grieve, are depressed, or have bad luck might struggle to buy the first affirmation.
But the latter example is easier to believe and repeat daily. It may also be more convenient to write and straightforward to think about when jotting down affirmations on your pad or journal.
The Best Ways to Use Positive Affirmations
It’s easy to get the hang of writing affirmations that will rewire your subconscious and turn you into a more positive person who can significantly impact your life and everyone around you.
But using affirmations correctly is equally important to writing and saying the right stuff.
Consistency and Patience
The brain can require over 60 days to build new neural pathways that influence your thinking patterns and beliefs. Therefore, positive affirmations take a long time to show results. It’s best to exercise patience and consistency in repeating daily affirmations until they become a part of your subconscious mind.
Think of it as getting into the habit of repeating affirmations, even multiple times per day, if necessary. You have to reach the point where speaking affirmations isn’t required for them to feel genuine.
Timing
People can recite affirmations whenever they have free time. That doesn’t mean your subconscious works as a sponge at any hour. For instance, your affirmations are less impactful or likely to sink in in the middle of the day or afternoon.
The human mind is most ready to receive and process new information in the morning and at night. Thus, the best times to recite positive affirmations are just after you wake up and before you go to bed.
Naturally, you can go one step further to really condition your subconscious. Speaking affirmations during meditation can have the same effect. But not everyone has the time, patience, or experience to enter a deep, meditative state. So mornings and evenings are great for absorbing positive affirmations.
Environment
You won’t get much out of reciting positive affirmations in public or during your commute to work. It would be best if you did it in a proper environment to get the desired effect.
Some may recommend reciting affirmations in a place of complete serenity with meditative music.
But all you need is a quiet place to recite your affirmations in front of a mirror. Find enough silence to avoid distractions for a few minutes.
Breathing
Taking deep breaths before reciting affirmations will help calm you down. Breathing is key to meditation and affirmations because it lets you block out distractions and focus on the task at hand.
Repetition
It doesn’t matter if you have one, two, three, or 10 affirmations on your daily list. Going through them once isn’t enough, even if you establish a daily routine. Many people recite their affirmation lists three times in a row.
The key is getting your brain to register more than a generic sentence. You have to make it remember it, which only happens through repetition.
Change Persistent Negative Thoughts One Day at a Time
Letting your mind feed on negative emotions, thoughts, and experiences is easy. It’s also dangerous because it creates a short path to depression, low self-esteem, self-doubt, and other negative states.
Affirmations are effective at changing your mental state and pushing you to achieve positive, realistic goals in all aspects of your life. The more positive affirmations you recite, the easier it is to reaffirm positive thoughts and cling to the good things in your life.
Start journaling, writing affirmations, and saying them out loud in front of a mirror daily. Teach yourself to let go of the negativity in your life and embrace the good.