How to Work with an Affirmation: here are six quick and easy steps to add the powerful spiritual practice of Affirmations to your daily routine.
Ever since I began using affirmations, I always have a couple I’m working with. Here are the six steps I recommend to make affirmations a useful, truthful part of your life.
Step #1:
Choose an affirmation which resonates with you and your sense of personal truth and desire for transformation.
Remember that the right affirmation resonates with your inner sense of truth. The best affirmation feels right, feels uplifting, offers encouragement, and helps ground and balance.
Step #2:
Repeat the affirmation over and over all day, out loud when possible.
Because the intention is to counter negative self-talk, repetition is key.
As I suggested in the beginning, start with five times when you get up and 5 times when going to sleep. Say your affirmation out loud.
As your effort expands, the goal is to get your affirmation into your mind where it’s easier repetition becomes automatic and more likely the thought instead of the old one.
To get to this automatic remembering of your affirmation, try these steps:
- Repeat five or six times upon waking in the morning and five or six times before going to sleep.
- Repeat while brushing teeth or waiting for email to load.
- Repeat while driving to work or on errands.
- Repeat while fixing your lunch.
- Repeat whenever you think of it or there’s nothing else in your mind.
- Repeat when you feel anxious or fearful.
- Repeat when your negative self-talk repeats the old idea.
Try to keep the affirmation at the top of your awareness throughout the day, allowing it to roll around in both heart and head as much as daily activities permit.
Pay attention to your experience. Notice what moves or releases. Pay attention to where there might be resistance within. An affirmation practice brings forward new possibility and choice because life is being seen and experienced in new ways.
An affirmation might also bring forward another aspect of negative self-belief to release. Don’t see this as failure! Instead, know that your affirmation is working. If you make note of what negativity or resistance arises, you now have what you need for choosing your next affirmation.
Step #3:
Use visual reminders.
Write the affirmation down and display in places where it can be easily and frequently seen: the wall beside a bed, the mirror in the bathroom, the front of a refrigerator, the dashboard of a car, above a computer screen.
Perhaps open display is not feasible, that’s ok. Create cards to carry. Put your affirmations on your phone. Wear reminders like a bracelet, a ring, or a rubber band. Place reminders around which symbolize the affirmation: a gemstone, a picture, or a vase of flowers.
Step #4:
Use the affirmation to counter discouraging or negative thoughts.
At the beginning of an affirmation practice, the negative self-talk of the critical voice will begin a counterattack, throwing up challenges to the truth of the affirmation. Whenever these negative thoughts appear, say the affirmation to yourself. By countering each old thought with the new idea of the affirmation, old beliefs will begin to weaken and lose hold.
The constant focus on the affirmation will help release feelings and thoughts which no longer fit with the ideas and intent of the affirmation. Saying an affirmation in response to negative thoughts begins to counter the negative habit and, over time, will help release this negativity and replace it with supportive habits and beliefs.
Step #5:
With growth and learning, adjust the affirmation to reflect new awareness.
In the beginning, something may not feel quite right about an affirmation because the affirmation is touching upon something within which resists change. Or over time, a steady practice with an affirmation begins to loosen layers which will then begin to appear in your awareness. These layers hold old habits and beliefs which no longer serve. In either case, adjustments help support smaller steps towards the complete idea.
For example, if the affirmation is “I am a generous person” and the word generous just doesn’t feel right, here’s a learning opportunity. Reflect on why generous doesn’t resonate or feels out of sync. Is generosity not possible? Is the thought of generosity overwhelming?
Modify the affirmation to make it initially easier to work with and possible to move toward the stronger statement after several days. For example, initially shift the positive affirmation to “I am learning that I am a generous person” If that doesn’t help, begin with a no-longer statement such as “I am no longer not a generous person.”
With several days of reflection and the use of a modified affirmation, most likely the new direction can be claimed without hesitation, “I am a generous person.”
Step #6:
Commit to an affirmation for 30 days.
Working with an affirmation helps anchor the new belief in the field of habit. While seven to fourteen days may be all that is needed, committing to the 30-day time frame allows the opportunity for new layers of understanding from deeper down to come to the surface. Balance digs in deep revealing more levels of healing and balance.
In the beginning, it’s possible to believe with certainty exactly why an affirmation will be helpful. However, a 30-day daily practice will allow additional and unanticipated knowing and learning to surface, bringing new awareness and new gifts for thought, consideration, and learning.
In fact, as one affirmation loosens the hold of the critical voice, additional negative beliefs may make themselves known, presenting additional opportunities for new affirmations. Take any emerging negative belief and create a new affirmation to allow the old habit to die and the new learning to take its place.
Know that this cycling is not a signal of failure. Instead, this coming and going is a great indication that transformation and integration is in full gear. While often not recognizable day to day, across month to month, you will begin to see your inner shifts and recognize a lightness or a lifting of the burdens of unnecessary criticism and negative self-belief.
Remember, it is possible to work with more than one affirmation at a time. However, learn limits. Sometimes two affirmations at a time is too much and sometimes three is not enough.
This is a short piece I have written for a new book on Affirmations. Read more in this column: A View from the Boundlessness.
