What is an Affirmation? Embrace Positivity
Today, I’m pulling out my cards again. Asking for wisdom, guidance, for these cards to show me what I need to know today.
“The moment I say positive affirmations, I step out of the victim role. I am no longer helpless. I acknowledge my own power.” and “I am taking the next step for my healing.”
There are a lot of things that have started me on this path. So many things that I can’t even begin to count them. One of these things, one of the powerful healing tools in my arsenal, are affirmations.
What is an affirmation?
An affirmation is a positive saying that you repeat out loud, or to yourself, to change your thinking in a positive way.
As most of you know, the last week was a week of Big Medicine for me. It was full of depression and yuckiness and nothing was going my way.
My self-talk was pretty terrible, I was mean to myself, rude, and hurtful. Me, myself, and I have forgiven each other and now we’re on good terms but it doesn’t completely erase the hurt I felt at the terrible things I thought about myself.
When I’m in that dark place it is sometimes hard to remember the things I should be doing to feel better. You know what will help, it is just so hard to expend the effort to do it. I didn’t write down any affirmations, I didn’t pull out my books full of them, but an affirmation did help me.
If you’ve ever seen/read The Help then you know that one of the main characters, Aibileen, a black maid in the 1960s takes care of a little four-year-old girl named Mae Mobley. Aibileen tells Mae Mobley
“You is smart, you is kind, you is important.”
I found this stuck in my head the whole time I was upset. It’s not eloquent or poetic, but it helped. As long as you can wrap your mind around something good, tell yourself something nice, then you are taking the right step. Affirmations can comfort you, they can be something you can use to heal yourself when you are scared or hurt. It gives you a way to take control over your emotions and not let them control you. You choose how you get to feel. You choose how things are going to turn out. It’s pretty amazing to have that type of power.
Just think about how your life would change if you called yourself beautiful every single day for a year. If you started to believe it. That thing that you really want for yourself? Put it into an affirmation and say it.
Do you use affirmations? How have they worked for you? What’s your favorite?
My current favorite affirmation is "My life is over-flowing with love, joy and abundance!" I find myself smiling when I say it, even when I am alone. Even now …
Personally, my favorite affirmation comes in form of a quote (as I love collecting quotes, and I found your blog by just searching self-love quotes on Google images). It goes like this. “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” I sympathize with people who feel the need to be beautiful, but I don’t really care about appearance beyond what is needed for pragmatic or practical reasons. Neither positive or negative comments about my appearance get much of a reaction from me. Not sure why. I just never cared about that stuff and found it boring growing up, and if people say I should care to obsessive levels, I just say, “I don’t care,” or “That’s boring,” and walk away. My issue is about not being able to accomplish as much, experience as much, or enjoy as much. And being naturally impulsive, novelty seeking, and a little bit of a daredevil, it’s nice to just err. . . slow down sometimes. So on my laptop, I made the screen say “Slow down,” as a reminder. I’m not sure if it’s working, but I’m trying.
Honestly, no, affirmations have not worked for me. I have tried dozens of affirmations, and I don’t notice any difference in my life, even if I say the same one consistently for a month. I am currently using a few self-forgiveness mirror affirmations after washing my hands in the morning. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m not holding my breath.