Content

• Steps
• Part 1 of 2: Content of Affirmations
• Part 2 of 2: Using Affirmations
• Tips
• Warnings

Affirmations are positive statements or appeals to yourself that improve your subconscious mind to help you see yourself more positively. Affirmations can help you change unhealthy behavior or achieve a goal, and can also help you make up for negative attitudes, the words we say to ourselves repeatedly (or that someone else repeats to us) that contributes to negative self-perception. It's pretty easy to create and use affirmations, but you will need dedication to make them work.

Steps

Part 1 of 2: Content of Affirmations

1. 1 Think about your positive qualities. We rarely focus on what we like about ourselves, instead focusing on what we would like to change. Redefining your qualities will help you break this cycle, and using affirmations to value yourself will give you the confidence you need to accept the affirmations about who you want to become.
   • Take a closer look at yourself by listing your best qualities, abilities, and other attributes: Are you bright? Write it down. Are you a hard worker? Check it out.
   • Record each quality in a short sentence, starting with the word "I" and using the present tense, for example, "I am beautiful" or "I am generous."

   These statements are affirmations of who you are.

2. 2 Think about what negative attitudes you want to counteract and what positive goals to achieve. Affirmations will be extremely useful in counteracting negative perceptions you have developed about your appearance, ability, or potential (we will call this type of affirmation “counter-attitudes”). Affirmations can also help you achieve specific goals, such as losing weight or quitting smoking. Make a list of your goals or aspects of your harmful self-perception that you want to change.

Part 2 of 2: Using Affirmations

1. 1 Prioritize items from your self-improvement list. You may find that you have many goals or that you need many counter-attitudes. However, it is best to focus on just a few affirmations at a time, so pick the ones that are most important or most relevant and work with them first. When you see improvement in those areas or achieve those goals, you can develop affirmations for other items on the list. You can try to use as many affirmations as possible at a given point in time, but it is best to start with no more than five.
2. 2 Write down your affirmations. Initially, you get good practice based on positive qualities in the present tense. You can use them on their own as counter-attitudes or add them to other affirmations to influence your future behavior. The affirmations you will use to influence future changes should follow the same basic form you wrote down earlier. Again, start with “I,” be short, clear, and positive. There are two kinds of future-oriented affirmations that you can use to move towards a goal:
   • “I Can” Statements: Write a sentence that confirms that you can achieve your goal. For example, if you want to quit smoking, a statement such as “I can quit smoking” is a good start. Many experts recommend avoiding any negative staging, so it is better to say something like “I can quit smoking” or “I can become independent from cigarettes”.
   • “I Will” Affirmations: Write a sentence that confirms that today you really are are using their ability to achieve the goal. So, following the example above, you can say “Today I will be free from smoking” or “Today I will smoke fewer cigarettes than yesterday”. Again, the affirmation should use a positive statement and a simple expression of what you will do today to achieve your long-term goal.
3. 3 Match some of your positive qualities to your goals. What positive qualities you claim will help you achieve your goals? If you quit smoking, for example, you may need willpower or courage, or you may need to reflect on the fact that you are beautiful or that you care about your family. Choose two or three such affirmations to support goal-directed affirmations.
4. 4 Make your affirmations visible so you can use them. Repetition is the key to the effectiveness of affirmations. You need to think about your affirmations several times a day, every day. There are several ways to do this:
   • Get in the habit of writing affirmations in your diary every morning as soon as you wake up and every evening before going to bed. Also during this time, repeat them to yourself. Ideally, your affirmations should be the first thing you think about when you wake up and the last thing before going to bed.
   • Meditate with your affirmations. Close your eyes, shut yourself off from the rest of the world, and think about your affirmations.Speak and repeat the words, but think about what they mean to you. Think about the future and try to feel the emotions that your affirmations trigger.
   • Leave reminder cards in different places. Use regular sticky reminder cards and write one affirmation each. Make a few cards for each statement, and then leave them where you will see them: stick one where you usually sit at the kitchen table, one to the steering wheel, one to the desktop drawer, one to the computer monitor, and so on. Further. Every time you see a card, read it and think about what it means.
   • Carry your affirmations with you. Make a list of your affirmations and put it in your wallet or purse. If you need inspiration or feel like you're straying from your goal, get out your affirmations and read them.
5. 5 Keep using your affirmations. The more often you say something, the better your brain will learn it. If you are trying to reach a short-term goal, use your affirmations until you reach it. If you want to use affirmations simply as counter-attitudes, then use each of them as much as you like.

Tips

• Affirmations can be used in conjunction with visualization to improve the effectiveness of both. By visualizing your affirmations, you make them more real in your mind. Connect your mental visualization using as many of your five senses as possible (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch).
• If you find it difficult to believe that an affirmation will materialize, add “I choose” to the affirmations. “I choose my healthy weight,” for example, or “I choose to maintain a healthy weight easily and effortlessly.”
• Give your affirmations more positive emotions. Think about how happy you’ll be when you achieve your goal, or think about that pleasant feeling when you know you’re good at something. Emotions are the fuel that makes affirmations more powerful.
• Ask your friends to tell you the version of your affirmation. For example, “Masha, you eat such healthy food. You must be feeling great. " Self-affirmations are valuable precisely because they save you from relying on the approval of others, but affirmations from others can be just as helpful as negative attitudes from others are.
• You can try replacing the password with an affirmation. Thus, you will use it frequently. Just be sure that this is not a password for something important.
• If you don't want people to know about your affirmations, just put your reminders in discreet places. However, it is very important that you can see them often, otherwise they will not do you any good.

Warnings

• Don't let another person be your judge. Some people see negative things all the time and tend to tell you something like, "I don't think you can handle it." Don't let them weaken your spirit, don't listen to them.
• Don't be discouraged if at first you feel like your affirmations aren't helping. Better think about how you use them. Do you really believe in them? If you don't believe in affirmations, they can still be effective, but they will take longer. If you're tired of waiting, make sure your goals are achievable and set a reasonable time frame for reaching them. Use affirmations to counteract negative attitudes or to achieve small goals, and eventually you will develop the confidence to solve big problems.
• Affirmations are not a quick fix to all your problems. Don't expect a miracle, especially overnight. It may have taken years for you to fully accept negative attitudes in your worldview, so it will take time to change your attitude towards yourself.
• If you find yourself just repeating the words of your affirmations instead of focusing on their meaning, change the affirmations.Claims may continue to have the same goals or characteristics, of course, but rephrasing affirmations can revive their effectiveness.