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Affirmations & You

Have you ever tried to use positive affirmations and struggled to feel like they worked? You’re not alone! Positive affirmations can be hard to use, especially if we’re not clear on what exactly they are, how to use them correctly, or what their benefits are.

Below are some great resources on the power of affirmations and how they can help you create a new mindset.

It’s mind power. The late Louise Hay, author, speaker and a founder of the self-help movement, wrote on her website, www.LouiseHay.com, that affirmations are any and all thoughts you hold. These thoughts create our experiences, our world and how we view ourselves. She stated that affirmations open the door to change, allowing us to consciously take control of our own path, and that words will help us navigate the path from where we are to where we want to be.

It’s self-affirming. Telling ourselves positive affirmations can further validate our self-identity and protect us during times when our self-concept comes under threat. Catherine Moore, psychologist and MBA, states in this article on PositivePsychology.com that positive affirmations allow us to see ourselves in various roles and different aspects of ourselves as positive, thus allowing us to be flexible with how and as whom we view ourselves.

It’s not magic. Even though it can be nice to envision positive affirmations as a mysterious and magical force that can immediately make us feel better, that’s not quite true. According to Ronald Alexander, PhD, executive eirector of the OpenMind Training Institute in Santa Monica, a prominent reason that positive affirmations don’t work for many people is because an opposite, recurring negative thought is already so ingrained in our minds, even unconsciously, that those negative thoughts are much stronger than the affirmation. In this Huffpost article, Alexander lists five steps to make affirmations more effective.

It can be simple. Looking for simple affirmations? Try out these straightforward, yet powerful, affirmations from the late Tibetan Buddhist nun Ani Trime in this article on Lion’s Roar. These were developed to help people tread on the path to a freer, clearer mind.

Published on Jan 23 09 : 00 am