SYBF Week 4 Check-in: Affirmations
Let’s start this midweek check-in with a 5-minute moment of meditation. I invite you to pause reading here and give yourself 5 blissful minutes with this inviting meditation video.
As you likely noticed, this video is full of affirmations. Maybe you heard something that made you say, “I really needed to hear that today.” If so, carry that with you in your day or make it one of your affirmations.
Using Self Affirmations
Our midweek check-in on self-affirmations focuses on making your affirmations most impactful and effective. Below are key points to remember as you select and use your affirmations.
Believable
Use affirmations that are believable, at least in part, to you. No matter how beautiful the words are, if you can’t believe they are a little true now, your brain adds an asterisk*. This asterisk tips off your subconscious brain that this isn’t something we really believe, and it defends against letting it into your automated self-talk system.
A few examples:
“I am capable of handling hard situations.”
“I am worthy of love and respect.”
“I will learn from all the opportunities in my life, even the hard ones.”
Time
Repetition over time is required for full effect. Every time you repeat your affirmation(s), they become a bit more ingrained in your subconscious mind. Over time, these messages will subtly and later more overtly influence your thoughts, feelings, and actions. And in all the best ways!
In short: Be patient, be consistent, and let the affirmations do their work.
Body-Brain Connection
Affirmations have been shown to help calm our stress response and nervous system. When our brain becomes connected with our affirmations by practicing them over time, we can intentionally use them when we have a stress response. A stress response can result in elevated heart rate, increased blood pressure, sweating, breathing quickly and shallowly, digestion issues such as heartburn and lower belly discomfort, body aches and pains, and more.
When you are stressed, you can relieve the symptoms by calling in your affirmations and using them to help you calm, center, and ground yourself. When we experience external stress, our minds naturally respond to stress with physical symptoms. The symptoms alone can actually elevate our stress response creating a cycle of increasing our stress. One way to combat stress is to actively and intentionally relieve the symptoms. When used repetitively to evoke a meditative state, our affirmations become mantras. Mantras have been shown to decrease stress symptoms of stress, thereby reducing and calming the mind and the body. As we reduce our stress response, our brains and bodies come back into alignment, allowing us to think and perform better in all parts of our lives.
Olivia