The Importance of Saying Affirmations
Say specific affirmations for at least 30 days to ensure that they sink into your subconscious and have a chance at becoming your subconscious self talk. If you drive a car you can listen to affirmations from individuals on YouTube that have channels dedicated to affirmations to help with different topics in your life. It is a perfect time to let these affirmations sink in and let the ideas permeate your consciousness until they become a part of you. It is my hope that each and every person learn how to use affirmations to create self-love, peace, joy, prosperity, and a sense of well-being for themselves today and every day. Today is a great day to start creating a joyous and fulfilling life. Today is a great day to change your life for the better. You already have the tools within you to do this this. The tools are your thoughts and your beliefs. Affirmations can improve the quality of your life. For those of you who are not familiar with the benefits of positive affirmations, they are simply anything you say or think a lot. Much of what we normally say,and think is very negative and creates negative experiences for us. Therefore, we have to retrain our thinking and talking into positive patterns if we want to change our lives. When we say an affirmation,it is a beginning point of change within our world; we are literally speaking things into existence. In essence you are saying to your subconscious mind, “I am taking responsibility, I am aware that there is something I can do to change.” When doing affirmations,you must consciouslychoose words that will either help to eliminate somethingfrom your life or help to create something new in your life. Every thought you think and every word you speak is an affirmation. Our self-talk is a stream of affirmations. You are using affirmations every moment whether you know it or not throughout the day in everything you say to yourself out loud or in your thoughts. You are affirming and creating your life experiences with every word and every thought. Your beliefs are merely habitual thinking patterns that you learned as a child, many of them work very well for you, however, some beliefs may be limiting your ability to create the thingsyou say that you want. What you want and what you believe you deserve may be very different as well. You must pay attention to your thoughts so that you can begin to highlight the ones that are creating experiences that you do not want in your life. Please realize that every complaint is an affirmation of something you think you don’t want in your life. Every time you get angry you are affirming that you want more anger in your life. Every time you feel like a victim you are affirming that you want to continueto feel like a victim. If you feel that life does not give you what you want,then it is most certain that you will never have the goodness that life gives to others until you change the way you think and talk. Just because you may have never learned how to think and talk doesn’t mean that you can’t start now. Theworld has recently started to realize that our thoughts create our experiences. It is time for all of us to wake up and to begin to consciously create our lives in a way that pleases and supports us.
Once you learn how to use affirmations, then you can apply the principles in all situations. Some people say that affirmations don’t work which is an affirmation in and of itself. What they mean is they don’t know how to use them correctly. They may say my prosperity is growing but think, “this is stupid I know it won’t work.” The negative affirmation will win out the positive one because it is part of a long-standing habitual way of looking at life. Sometimes people say their affirmations once per day and then complain the rest of the time. It will take a long time for
affirmations to work if it is done this way. The negative/complaining affirmations will always win because they are more of them and they are usually said with great feeling or emotion. Saying affirmations is only part of the procedure, what wedo for the rest of the day and night is even more important. The secret to having your affirmations work quickly and consistently is to prepare the world around them for growth. Affirmations are like seeds planted in soil. For seeds to grow, they need rich soil where abundant growth can happen. The more you can choose to think thoughts that make you feel good the quicker the affirmations work. Thinking happy thoughts is not always simple but it is doable. The way you choose to think right now is just a choice. You may not realize it because you have felt this way for so long,but it really is a choice. This very moment you can choose to change your thinking, it won’t turn everything around overnight but if you are consistent and make the choice every day to think thoughts that make you feel good, you will definitely make positive changes in every area of your life. I choose to wake up each morning with thinking of blessings and gratitude for the wonderful life I have and I make the choice to think happy thoughts no matter what others are doing. I don’t do it 100% of the time but I am up to about 75% now and it’s made a big difference in how much I enjoy life and how much good just seems to flow into my every day. The only moment you ever live is this very moment. It is the only moment you have any control over and if you don’t choose to feel good in this moment how can we create future moments that are abundant and fun? How do you feel right now? Do you feel good? Do you feel bad? What are your current emotions? What is your gut feeling? Would you like to feel better and reach for a better feeling thought? If you feel bad in anyway, sad, irritable, bitter, resentful, angry, fearful, shameful, depressed, anxious, stressed, etc., then you have temporarily lost your connection to the flow of good experiences God has waiting for you. Don’t waste your thoughts on blame. There isn’t a person, place or thing that has any control over your feelings because they do not think in your mind. This is also why you really only have control over yourself,and you have no control over others, because you cannot control their thoughts. The only thing you will ever have total control of is what you choose to think and this directly correlates to what you will get in life. Remembering joyful experiences and thinking of good things you would like to have happen in the future are just like affirmations and will have the same affect. Looking forward to tomorrow and thinking these kinds of thoughts is an act of loving yourself and loving yourself creates miracles in your life. Now let’s get to the affirmations. Doing affirmations is consciously choosing to sync certain thoughts that will create positive results in the future. It is a focal point to begin changing your thinking. Affirmative statements are going beyond the reality of the present to the creation of future simply by the words you use in the present. When you choose to say, “I am very prosperous,” you may have very little money in the bank at the moment. What you were doing isplanting seeds for future prosperity. Each time you repeat it you are affirming the seeds you have planted in the atmosphere of your mind. That is why you want it to be a happy atmosphere as things grow much quicker in fertile rich soil. It is important for you to always say your affirmations in present tense, “I have,” or “I am.” If you say, “I am going to,” or “I will have,” it stays out there in the future. The universe takes your thoughts and words very literally and gives you what you say you want. This is another reason to keep your mental atmosphere happy.
It is easier to think of positive affirmations when you feel good. Think of it this way, every thought you think counts so don’t waste your ever so important thoughts. Every positive thought brings good into your life and every negative thought pushes the good away. It keeps what you want just out of your reach. How many times in your life have you almost gotten something good, and it seems to be just taken away at the last moment? If you could remember your mental atmosphere at those times,you would have the answer to why some things are not happening for you. Negative thoughts create the barrier against positive affirmations working. If you say, “I don’t want to be sick anymore,” this is not an affirmation. For good health you have to say, “I am grateful for my good health.” Clearly state what you do want, “I am abundant and happy every day.” If you say, “I wish I didn’t feel terrible. I wish I wasn’t depressed,” you will not see positive change because the more you talk about the problem the more you are anchored in place. Don’t blame others for your problems, it’s just another waste of time as we are all in control of our own consciousness, our own thoughts and we attract specific experiences to us by the way we think. When you change your thinking process, everything in your life will also change. You will be happy and surprised to see how people, places, things, and circumstances can change. Blame is just another negative affirmation and you do not want to waste your influential thoughts on. Instead learn to turn your negative affirmations around into positive ones. For example, I hate my body should become, “I love and appreciate my body.” “I’m tired of being sick,” should be, “I allow my body toreturn to its natural vibrant health.” “I’m too fat,” should be, “I honor my body and take good care of it.” “Nobody loves me,” should be, “I radiate love and love fills my life.” “I’m not creative,” should be, “I’m always discovering talents I did not know I had.” “I’m stuck in a job that I hate,” should be, “I look forward to going to work every day.” These affirmations are powerful and positive changes will happen because of them. Really pay attention to your thoughts so that you can start to make positive changes to your self-talk. Start with some self-esteem affirmations and see how many of the self-esteem affirmations you can memorize or write down on post it notes and display around your home or car, and then repeat them off and on. It will help change that worthless feeling you might be carrying around to one of self-esteem and self-worth. Then watch your positive affirmations materialize your desires. Affirmations are solutions that will replace whatever problem you might have. Whenever you have a problem repeat that all is well and everything is working out for my highest good over and over again. Say to yourself, “Only good will come of this situation and I am safe.” This simple affirmation will work miracles in your life. I highly suggest that younot share your affirmations with others who may put these ideas down. When you are just getting started it is best to keep your thinking to yourself until you have achieved your desired results. Then when friends see your life has changed a lot and that you’re so different then you can explain what you havebeen doing. Remember to make up affirmations on your own first. Affirmations for you to use right now: “I feel good about myself,” “I make positive changes in my life,” “I am grateful for today,” “I am confident,” “I am strong,” etc. When talking about your health, one thing to note is that you cannot get angry at your body for any reason. Anger is another affirmation,and it is telling your body that you hate it or hate parts of it. Your cells are veryaware of every thought you have. Think of your body is a servant that is working as hard as it can to keep you in perfect health no matter how you treat it. Your body knows how to heal itself. If you feed it healthy foods and beverages, give it exercise and sufficient sleep and think happy thoughts, the cells are working in a happy healthy atmosphere, however, if you feed it chemicals and ingredients that cause inflammation, then the cells in your body are working at a disadvantage and in a disagreeable atmosphere and your body will not be as healthy as you would like it to be. You will never create good health by talking or thinking about your illness. Good health comes from love and appreciation. You want to put good thoughts, feelings, and self-talk into your body as much as you possibly can.
Talk to your body in loving ways. Is there is a part of your body that is a sick or riddled with disease? Then you want to treat it with compassion and loving self-talk. Tell it how much you love it and that you are doing everything you can to help it get well quickly. Talk with a health practitionerif needed to create a healthy happy mental atmosphere and to be a willing participant in your own health. Every cell within your body responds to every single thought you think and every word you speak. Our ways of thinking and speaking produces body behaviors and postures and either eases or diseases the person. Someone who has a scowling face was not produced by having joyous loving thoughts. Our faces and bodies show so clearly a lifetime of thinking patterns. To customize your own life cycle starts with changing your thinking right now. You can create thoughts to create a mental atmosphere that contributes to illness,or you can choose to think thoughts that creates ahealthy atmosphere in you and around you for a happy, healthy mind and body.Your body positive affirmations for health I enjoy the foods that are best for my body I love every cell of my body I make healthy choices I have respect for myself I look forward to a healthy old age because I take loving care of my body. I am constantly discovering new ways to improve my health. I focus my thought and self-talk to bringing my body to a place of optimum health by giving it what it needs on every level. Healing happens when I get out of my way and allow the intelligence of my body to do its healing work.Now let’s talk about the power of forgiveness. You can never be free of bitterness as long asyou continue to think unforgiving thoughts. How can you be happy right now in this current moment if you choose to think angry and resentful thoughts?Being resentful or bitter cannot create joy, no matter how justified you feel. If you insist on holding onto the past,you will never be free. Forgiveness to yourself and others will release you from the prison of the past. When your affirmations are not working it usually means there’s some more forgiving to be done. When you do not flow freely with life inthe present moment it usually means you are holding onto a painful memory. This can be regret, sadness, hurt, fear, guilt, blame, anger, resentment, and sometimes a desire for revenge. Each one of these states of thinking and being comes from a space of unforgiveness a refusal to let go and to come into the present moment. You can only create your future in the present moment if you are not holding onto the past. It is in this current momentthat the true thoughts and words are so extremely powerful; so,don’t waste your current thoughts devoting energy to negative thoughts. Don’t give your own power away because you were placing the responsibility for your feelings on someone else. People in our lives may behave in ways that trigger uncomfortable responsesin us, however, they did not get into our minds and create the buttons that have been pushed. Taking responsibility for our own feelings and reactions is the mastering of our ability to respond in other, kinder words. We can learn to consciously choose topositively respond, rather than simply react to what those around us do. Forgiveness is a tricky and confusing concept for many people, but there is a difference between forgiveness and acceptance. Forgiving someone does not mean that you condone their behavior,and the act of forgiveness takes place in your own mind it really has nothing to do with the other person. True forgiveness lies in setting yourself free from what was done or said anddoing so to free yourself. Being free from holding onto the pain is simply an act of releasing yourself from the negative energy. Also,forgiveness does not mean allowing the painful behaviors or actions of another to continue in your life. Sometimes forgiveness means letting go of certain people in our lives. You forgive them and release what they did by taking a stand and setting healthy boundaries. This is often the most loving thing you can do not only for yourself but for the other person as well. No matter what your reasons are for having bitter unforgiving feelings, you can go beyond them. You can let things go. You can live in the now and you can choose to think thoughts that make you feel good right now. You can choose to practice thinking positively. Make little changes in your schedule to create a positive today and tomorrow. Know that in creating this habitual way of thinking, you are creating thinking habits that will serve you well. Affirmations like, “As I forgive myself it becomes easier to forgive others,” “I forgive myself for not being perfect,” “I am living the very best way I know how,” “It is now safe for me to release all of my childhood traumas and move into the life I dreamed of living,” “I forgive everyone in my past for all perceived wrongs,” will be an excellent way to start this process of positively letting go of the past through forgiveness.
If you say, “I have no creativity,” well that is an affirmation that will be true for you for as long as you continue to use it. There is innate creativity flowing in all of us and if we let it out it will surprise and humble us all. Many of us are tapped into the creative flow of energy in the cosmos. Some of us express ourselves more creatively than others but we all can do this. We are all creating our lives, our realities every day. Each of us has unique talents and abilities. You are creating every moment of your life from the most common ordinary creations of new cells in your body from choosing your emotional responses to your present job to your emotional health and stability, to your relationships with friends and your attitudes about yourself. No matter how you choose to express yourself creatively you want to have satisfaction and to be deeply fulfilled by all that you do. If you will allow it, you are divinely guided by God at all times. Know that God makes no mistakes. When there is a strong desire within you to express or create something, know that this feeling is divine guided. Longing is your calling, no matter what it is, if we go with it,we will be guided and assured of success. When a purpose or path is laid before us,we have a choice to trust it and go with it or remain stuck in the fear. Trusting the perfection that resides within you is the key. I know it can be scary, but everybody is afraid of something,and we can do it anyway. Remember that God loves you and wants you to succeed at everything you do. You are expressing yourself creatively every moment of the day in fact expressing yourself creatively is the only thing you do. Cognitive Behavioral TherapyCBT looks at our feelings, our thoughts, and our behaviors. It looks at how our feelings impact our behaviors and how our behaviors impact our feelings. If we don’t feel good or feel like exercising,then we likely won’t exercise. Many of us operate in a way where we are driven byour feelings and how we feel directly impact our behavior. CBT looks at what we think and how what we think impacts how we behave and then of course how we behave impacts how we think and how we behave impacts how we feel. So, for example, in the example that I just gave where if you don’t feel like exercising and you get up and you do it anyway, you probably will feel better afterwards and feel more energized. Now to change how you feel, that’s the trick that you need to master. There are at a lot of videos on social media and on YouTube that I’ve been looking at about therapy and it seem like these days it’s just very popular to say that what you think creates your world how do you behave creates how you feel and it’s only sort of true but that’s only half of what CBT encompasses. CBT is focused on what we think and how we act as they both create how we feel, so let me give you an example of how this might work for somebody who has depression. In general, people with depression have incredibly negative self talk. They will talk to themselves in a way they would never talk to a friend and if you’re doing
that it’s very helpful to be aware of it so you can gradually change your self talk to be more positive and compassionate. Imagine someone who is depressed and can’t get off the couch and lays on the couch all day, maybe eats an entire bag of potato chips and salsa earlier in the day and then ends up feeling worse and worse. Then because they feel awful,they probably don’t get off the couch and the whole thing just spirals downward. The behaviors contribute to the thoughts, the thoughts contribute to the feelings,and it goes around and around and around. An example of how this might work for anxiety, think of your boss being sharp with you and you have a lotof anxiety you might immediately start saying, “I’ll be homeless if I lose this job…” and within about 30 seconds you’re on the street and your body is completely activated and you are feeling emotionally stressed and anxious, your thoughts are getting more anxious, you’re probably shutting down more and more, and this creates even more anxiety. This may lead to you avoiding certain tasks or people because anxiety isso bad that you actually don’t do any work for the rest of the day. This might lead to yougetting into trouble at your job. I’ve had several patients say, “I don’t like how I feel. Help me change how.” I feel that talk therapy can be very difficult if not impossible to directly change your feelings. So,to change your feelings, you need to either change how you think or change how you behave. Try to focus on where we canchange cognition patterns or patterns of thinking. Think about what patterns of thinking and behaving are incredibly unhelpful or destructive. We call these negative patterns of thinking and behaving toxic as they are usually pretty distorted. Then we also look at what changes can we make in behavior? One of the tools commonly used in cognitive behavioral therapy is called a thought journal. This can be extremely helpful as you can reflect and journal what thoughts led to certain behaviors and what behaviors led to certain thoughts throughout the day and in various situations.
I want to take a moment to talk about unhealthy behaviors. So unhealthy behaviors typically fall into the category of compulsive behaviors or avoidant behaviors. Compulsive behaviors can be working too much, overeating, drinking too much, and avoidant behaviors could be not driving if you’re afraid of driving, not socializing if you have social anxiety, or isolating if you’re depressed, procrastinating if you have fear. Some of the things that you’re doing right or saying right now are heavily contributing to how you feel. Everything that you think and do becomes either an affirmation or a trigger for cellular memory. When we feel a heavy emotion, our cells store this negative energy. When we feel frightened, stressed or nervous, our cells store this energy. Our cells remember everything that we say and do. Therefore, we need to choose our words and actions very carefully. Don’t sit around saying, “I wish I were different, or I hate my life.” These words are stored in our cells and our cells regenerate these feelings. Try using affirmations to gently change what is happening within your cells. Try pushing yourself to do something that once made you happy to gently change what is being programmed in your cells. In taking action through words and behavior modification, you will gently create the change necessary within your mind and body for long-lasting change. This is how I like to use CBT in my therapy practice. If there isn’t action behind your words, nothing will change.Reinforcing fear increases anxiety and this can also increase depression symptoms. Calming behaviors throughout your daily routine can greatly help to reduce, even eliminate, anxiety and depression symptoms. Calm and healthy behaviors that can be added throughout the day or when anxiety heightensare going for a walk with a friend, taking a cold shower, meditating, or spending time with a havea pet. All of these can make you feel better for a second, minute, or even all day if you sprinkle in these calming/happy things in throughout your day. You can complete a daily log or journal to write out the facts of what happens in various situations, your feelings within various situations, your emotional and physical needs and wants, and then label them on a scale of 0 to 10. Try to be specific if writing things out butuse bullet points so that you don’t feel that you have to write a journal entry but rather a reflection journal about your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
When reflecting, if you notice specific thoughts, self-talk, or reactions to issues or people, try to focus on how you can redirect your thoughts throughout the day. What could you say in those moments to yourself that would make you feel better? What affirmations have you tried that has helped in the past? Maybe store those in the notes in your phone so that you can have something visual to look at in times when you are stressed, triggered, sad or anxious. Now think about how you can reframe certain situations that have happened in the past? Think about what the neutral fact is within the situation and what your reaction to the situation was. What would you say to a friend in this situation? Try to say the same things to yourself. This is the practice of self-compassion. Now think about some alternative behaviors that might be more adaptive and help you feel better during the situation. Try to write down all of the coping techniquesthat you think would help in this situation so that if you are triggered again you can pull up the notes in your phone and have redirection techniques and affirmations that will help to pull you out of the negative thinking pattern. The more that you are able to redirect and reframe, the more your emotional brain focuses on the things that help you to feel better. So even if you’re not feeling better when you initiate these changes you are creating new patterns of thinking and behaving and eventually,theywill be stored in your subconscious. What many people don’t understand is that you are likely driven by your feelings, we make ourselves want to do something that we don’t want to, however, if we make ourselves do things anyway,we can create new muscle memory and new patterns in cognition. Having anxiety and depression is very limiting and sometime exposure therapy is the best thing that can move us through the negative thoughtsand feelings to more happy and hopeful feelings. After a while you won’t haveto make yourself do things anymore but rather you will want to do the things that make you happy and this change will come with little to no resistance. One important takeaway of this message is that your behavior is that initiating positive healthy behaviors that help you feel better is a very big part of CBT. You can’t simply talk your way to happiness, there has to be action behind your words.
People thrive in environments that help them meet their innate emotional and physical needs. As humans we have an emotional desire to fulfill certain needs within us and within our daily lives and when we don’t fill those needs, that is when mental health disorders can creep in. Mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression. When we are not able to fulfillthese needs,we unavoidably suffer. Taking action is extremely important to meeting our needs. Anxiety is a signal that you are not meeting your needs in some way. Depression is also a signal that you are not meeting your needs in some way. How we make sense of what is happening around us in our world can also either create mental illness or challenge us to thrive within choppy waters. It is often easier to change feelings than it is thoughts. Emotions are a fundamental necessity for humans and imperativefor human physical survival. A change in our thoughts is a natural consequence of a change in our emotional responses. For PTSD and trauma, and phobias, it’s not faulty thinking that’s the problem but it is necessary to come feelings as you institute change/