Positive Affirmations: How It Can Help You Feel Better?

With the growth of awareness about mental health among people, many understand how our negative thoughts can immensely affect our lives. Because our thoughts are extremely powerful. And excessive stress can affect our physical health pretty badly.

So, if negative thoughts have such power in affecting the state of our lives…why don’t we consider how much positive thoughts can affect us?

What are Positive Affirmations?

Positive Affirmations are a set of positive statements or thoughts to help you overcome negative thoughts. It is a self-help technique to bring positive changes in your life.

I am pretty sure you have heard of buzzwords like ‘detoxing’ and ‘minimalism’ in the last few years. These trends often come and go. They are often subjective and might not work for everyone.

However, words like “positive thinking” are being thrown around a lot these days as well. And there is a legitimate reason behind it.

I too believe in the power of positive affirmations. Daily affirmations can help you relieve a lot of the negativity from your life.

Most of us don’t realize that our thoughts are simply a habitual pattern of thinking that we picked up growing up. While a lot of these are a core part of you, the not-so-nice things you may be telling yourself are probably bringing more harm than you can imagine.

Some of your beliefs may even be impeding your capacity to create the exact things you want in life. In simple words, it’s holding you back! So, what exactly do positive affirmations entail?

Examples of Positive Affirmations:

• I don’t sweat the small stuff!
• I am in charge of how I feel and today I am choosing happiness.
• I will not compare myself to others.

Benefits of Positive Affirmations

There are quite a lot of ways in which positive thinking while practicing affirmations can help you.

–  Decreasing Negativity in Our Lives

Many of us say that our actions are a reflection of our thoughts. When we are not kind to ourselves, we fail to be kind to others. Thus, ending up lonely or feeling miserable.

I’m sure none of us consciously want to make others feel bad by spewing our own darkness on them; we want to spread smiles. And we can only do that by being positive.

Positive affirmations help us become much more aware of our thinking patterns and emotions because most of them are intuitive. This decreases the possibility of negative thinking behaviours from manifesting.

Let’s say, for example, you believe that you get annoyed easily and you have always been this way. Hence, you are cranky throughout the day.

However, does it make you or the people around you feel good? Not really.

If you assert the situation from an outside perspective, you’ll realize you are not fun to be around. You most likely are pushing people away without even realizing it!

On the other hand, if you tell yourself “Small inconveniences may annoy me, however, I won’t let it affect my mood or sour anyone else’s”. Such internal affirmations will help you feel better and not project your anger on the people around you.

–  Helps You be More Optimistic and Confident

When you are not beating yourself up over the things that you have no control over, you will definitely feel a lot better. While we may have no control over some of the things that happen to us, we can always choose how we react to them. If we keep fretting over a bad thing that happened to us, we will keep making ourselves feel bad.

Although we all grieve and deal with trauma differently, it is important to know when to let go and how to turn it into something more positive.

We can always learn from failures. Use positive affirmations to inspire oneself and motivate changes that will help boost your self-esteem. These affirmations can be used to overcome self-deprecating behavior patterns and replace them with more of an optimistic approach towards life.

What you really want and what you think you are worth may be completely the opposite. You must pay attention to your thoughts so that you can eliminate the ones influencing you to not be your best self.

For example, if you believe you are bad at math and you will never be able to pass the exam, there is a high chance you won’t. On the other hand, if you think that “Sure, math is hard. But with enough practice I can definitely learn to be better at it!”, this will definitely tip the scales in your favour and bring a better outcome.

–  Improving Your Quality Of Life

As humans, it is completely natural to have negative thoughts. While some of us have a few of these thoughts here and there throughout the day. Some of us can be extremely hard on ourselves by letting these thoughts consume our minds constantly.

Long periods of exposure to such negative thoughts can hamper our self-worth. Consequently, our confidence, attitude, and perspective can all suffer.

Negative ideas can be so powerful that we can even end up self-sabotaging.  We convince ourselves that we aren’t good enough. As a result, these beliefs wreak havoc on our personal and professional life, relationships, and individuality.

Along with emotional benefits, positive affirmations provide us physical health benefits too. According to research, having a positive mindset is associated with better health results, notably improved cardiovascular health.

Facts show that optimistic people, particularly senior citizens, live a lot longer, have better lives, and suffer from fewer cardiovascular problems!

How Do Positive Affirmations Work?

Positive affirmations might sound a bit silly at first to anyone battling depression. But consider positive affirmations in this sense: many of us undergo regular workouts to improve our physical health. And positive affirmations are similar to mental and emotional workouts.

Positive mental repetitions can rewire our thinking habits, encouraging us to think positively over time.

While many of us think that rewiring our brain is impossible, especially after a certain age, it is not true. You can rewire the way you think at any stage of your life, thanks to the neuroplasticity of your brain. Our brain can change the way it functions depending on the circumstances in order to adapt.

For example, learning a new language. It is definitely easier to learn a new language as a child. But it is not impossible to learn a new one as an adult.

And when you are telling yourself positive and kind things, you are helping rewire your tendency of pursuing a negative train of thoughts. Imagining yourself doing something engages some of the same brain regions as really encountering similar events.

Therefore, repeating affirming comments about oneself on a regular basis helps train your brain to accept these positive affirmations as true. When you sincerely feel you can do something, your behaviors tend to follow suit.

How to Implement Positive Affirmations in Real life?

We all know most things are easier said than done. While positive affirmations are mostly about thinking, you have to consciously remind yourself to tell these affirmations to yourself.

Be realistic with your affirmations. Don’t just tell yourselves things that don’t have anything to do without your regular life. Try practicing affirmations in the morning or before going to sleep, but you can also do them whenever you feel like as they require very little effort to think.

Some believe that penning down affirmations regularly is beneficial since the act of writing things down is an effective way to remember things. Others suggest just repeatedly reciting them.  Nowadays you can even download apps that are preloaded with affirmations to help you with your health, career, and relationships!

With that being said there is no exact way of practicing positive affirmations. You should do what works for you the best!

Wrapping Up

Affirmations are strong, optimistic phrases that try to steer your thoughts consciously and subconsciously, confronting your previous unhealthy and negative thought patterns. They have the power to change your ideas, feelings, beliefs, and behavior when expressed with determination. They may assist in reflecting on your successes when utilized consciously to produce change. There is no set formula about the frequency and duration of self-affirmations. It might also not work for everyone. However, these positive belief phrases can help everyone feel a bit calmer and hopeful. So craft well-intended practice affirmations for yourself and concentrate on what you want rather than what you are trying to avoid!

Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash