3 Tips for Making Affirmations Work For You

I’ve been thinking a lot about affirmations lately. I have three that I work with every morning as part of my routine for living a more healthy life. They work really well now, but for the longest time I wasn’t getting the results I wanted.

Affirmations get a really bad rap for exactly that reason — they don’t always give us the results we think they should.

Most of the time, however, it’s not the fault of the affirmation process. If we’re not getting the results we want, it’s usually because of the words we’re using to frame our affirmations.

I’m certainly guilty of it, and more often that I’m comfortable admitting to. I’m still learning to really think before I think, and too many times catch myself on the verge of thoughts like “I’m so stupid” or “I’m so fat.” A big one I’m working at reframing now is “I’m so tired” when what I really want to tell myself is “I have plenty of energy to get through the day.”

I’m definitely getting better at making sure only positive thoughts get past the filters, but I gotta say … it’s hard work!

But enough about me.

Here’s a few things I’ve learned about using affirmations that you may find help you to get better results with yours:

1. Affirmations that are not personal to you won’t work very well for you. They need to be expressed in the first person so that your subconscious mind recognizes that this is something it is supposed to go to work on. Always start them with “I” or “My” instead of “you”.

2. Affirmations need to be stated in the “Now”. When I first started, I would always start my statements with “I will”. I’ve since learned that “I am” works much better because the subconscious recognizes “I am” as something being done now, not in the future.

3. Affirmations expressed as a negative will not get you the results you’re looking for. The subconscious doesn’t recognize “not” so instead of acting as an affirmation of changing behaviour, a statement of “I am not” or “I will not” instead serves as a reinforcement for the behaviour that you are trying to change.

There are so many things you can do with affirmations if you word them in the most positive way possible. I’ve had good results since rewriting all of my daily statements along these guidelines. I hope that they work as well for you too.

Do you use affirmations? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.