Five Steps to Write Your Own Affirmations

Affirmations are statements that you claim for yourself. Affirmations are powerful. Use the power of affirmations to help you overcome bad habits and achieve lifelong goals. When you incorporate affirmations into your daily life, you can enjoy the benefits found in the power of positive statements.

Some people ask what the difference is between prayer and affirmations. When we pray to our Lord (or “Higher Power” as some people reference), we ask the Lord for help. When we speak affirmations, we speak as though the prayer has already been answered. For instance, when we pray, we might ask, “Dear Lord, please grant me the ability to have patience with my in-laws.” The affirmation spoken would be, “I am patient with my in-laws.”

Sometimes, in life you experience negative events and if you are not careful, you can easily allow negative thoughts to overrule your subconscious mind. You fill your head with thoughts that continue your direction down a negative path. For instance, if you hear someone make a comment about your weight, you could easily develop inferior feelings about yourself and start to tell yourself that you are fat, ugly, and not worthy of love. These negative thoughts can become embedded in your mind, generating a pattern of negativity which, over time, can influence your behavior. On the other hand, you could tell yourself that you are healthy, beautiful, and worthy of love. The brain processes whatever information you feed it. So, if you are feeding your brain negative information, your brain will process that information and cause you to act accordingly.

To the same extent, your brain also processes positive information and causes you to act according to the positive information you feed it.

Using affirmations, you can uproot negative thought patterns by replacing negative talk with positive talk. Affirmations are powerful suggestions that help build a strong positive attitude. They are statements that you say to yourself to the point that your brain accepts it, processes it and causes you to act according to the positive information you speak on a regular basis.

You can find affirmations in books and on the internet, but in order for affirmations to be most effective they need to be your affirmations. In other words, affirmations need to be words that are meaningful to you . After all, it is your brain that you are trying to redirect and not someone else’s brain. You are the only one who knows what needs to be affirmed.

So, get out a piece of paper and write down your affirmations. And, when you write your affirmations, keep the following tips in mind:

1. Make them personal.
   Always write your affirmations using “I”. Your affirmations are personal, therefore they should be written for you.
   
   Example: “I am having a successful day!”
2. Use the present tense.
   You want to change your feelings now , so you need to write affirmations that get you to change the way you feel now . Using the present tense helps you feel the effects of your spoken affirmations in the very present moment.
   
   Example: “I am full of energy.”
3. Be real!
   Be who you are and write your affirmations the way you would really say them. Don’t try to get all formal, technical, and flowery with your affirmations. Your affirmations need to be your words, the way you would say them if you were speaking them to yourself. After all, you are going to be speaking them to yourself, so you need to write words in a way that you would comfortably speak.
   
   Bad Example: “I feel the essence of my life is forever enjoyable.”
   Good Example: “I enjoy my life.”
4. Keep it short.
   Write your affirmations with short sentences. Write with only one thought per sentence. The idea is to be able to say your affirmation in one breath and with a single focus per affirmation. You can have several affirmations per subject; however each affirmation must be one sentence and one idea per sentence.
   
   Example: “I am victorious.”
5. Make it believable.
   You’ve got to believe in what you tell yourself; otherwise your brain will not process it effectively. It is critical that your affirmation must not conflict with your basic life concept. In other words, your affirmation must be a reflection of something you feel comfortable achieving. If you believe it, you can achieve it.
   
   Example: “I am good at math.”

I have found that it makes a difference whether I read my affirmations to myself or say my affirmations out loud. When I simply read my affirmations, I don’t feel much force. But, when I say my affirmations out loud, I feel a connection from my words to my brain, and when that happens, I see results more quickly. -- MarleneB

Use affirmations to help you feel calm, cure addictions, or achieve a specific goal. Set your goal and then write your affirmations to assure that you achieve your goal.

• Say Your Affirmations Daily
  You must say your affirmations daily in order to condition your brain to construct a pattern of belief and direct your behavior. Breathe deeply and be comfortable when saying your affirmations. You can whisper them or you can say them out loud. The key is to hear yourself saying them.
• Keep Your Affirmations Handy
  For the best results, keep your affirmations in a place where you can see them readily. Put them on a “sticky” note and stick them on your computer or the bathroom mirror. Place them on the refrigerator. Stick them to your credit card. Any place is fine, so long as you can see them every day and have an opportunity to say them every day.

When you fill your mind with positive thoughts through your written and spoken affirmations, good things are likely to happen to you. Achieve your goals through the powerful effects of affirmations.