The Power of Affirmations

What do you think would happen if you woke up every morning and told yourself how amazing, intelligent, kind and wonderful you are? What if you looked in the mirror and truly said those words to yourself, and did your best to encompass those feelings? Try it. Try affirming how amazing you are to yourself every morning for a week. See how you feel, and see the difference in your behavior. These are called affirmations. 

Now, how exactly do affirmations work? Well, the word affirmation is defined as “the action or process of affirming something or being affirmed”. In other words, it’s almost like convincing yourself that something is real and true. An article from Healthline said, “Neuroplasticity, or your brain’s ability to change and adapt to different circumstances throughout your life, offers a clue to help understand not only what makes affirmations work, but how to make them more effective”. 

So, let’s talk about how to put affirmations into action. Sometimes our brains get confused between reality and imagination, but in this case, that’s actually helpful.

Let’s give you an example. If you’re creating a mental image in your mind about how scary, intimidating and hard a first day at a new job will be - your day will most likely end up being like this. That’s because you convinced your brain of how bad the day will be. Your brain is then going to take this and make it happen. Here is where affirmations come in! If you wake up the day before your first day at a new job, and you’re constantly telling yourself how brave you are and how exciting this opportunity is for you, it’ll convince your brain to become way more positive and put these feelings into existence - thus, making your day much better. 

For instance, you’d replace this:

“Ugh, tomorrow is going to be such a hard day, and I know I’m just not going to do a good job.”

With a more positive affirmation:

“Tomorrow is going to be great, and I know if any challenges come up, I will be able to handle it just fine.”

Just adding simple positive affirmations like this to your daily schedule will help you immensely. Talking to yourself with love and positivity will literally convince your brain that all those things are true, which in turn will make you FEEL all that positivity and love.

“Fake it till you make it” is basically the best way to explain this. Even if at the time you don’t think you’re smart enough, or pretty enough, if you truly say “I am smart and pretty” out loud to yourself in the mirror, you will eventually start to TRULY believe these things!

So, here’s our challenge for you: wake up, look in the mirror and tell yourself you’ve got this. Tell yourself how brilliant and amazing you are, even give yourself a hug if you want to! Do this for seven days straight, and we promise that you will truly start to feel much happier.