Affirmations are a powerful tool to support achieving your goals, build a habit of thinking positively, develop confidence, show yourself love, and achieve success in love and money. Before starting out on your affirmation journey, it will help to understand a bit more about what they are, how they work, and what it’s really all about. So let’s get into it.
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What do affirmations mean?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines affirmations as “emotional support or encouragement.” Affirmations are a short saying or sentence that you say to yourself for encouragement or inspiration. An affirmation example is, “Each day that I wake, I give thanks.” Affirmations are also intended to state the truth, especially your truth, as the root verb of affirmation is to affirm or to tell the truth. So each time you say an affirmation, you are reinforcing your belief in the truth about who you are and what you want in life and combating negative self-talk.
How do affirmations work?
You may be asking, “Do affirmations REALLY work?” The answer is yes.
Just like building any good habit, affirmations work by regularly self-affirming your values and integrity and building a positive mental muscle. It’s just like when you establish a steady exercise habit, it becomes easier to do the thing. It may feel corny or silly at first to say affirmations out loud, but there have actually been studies on the effectiveness of affirmations, based on the self-affirmation theory. The theory says that we have the motivation to maintain self-integrity and see ourselves as competent, stable, good, and trustworthy to ourselves.
It reassures us that we don’t have to be a super mom, or the smartest person in the room, or the most successful business entrepreneur; we only have to act in alignment with our own values and be true to ourselves.
Do you need to say affirmations out loud?
You should say affirmations out loud because it forms an auditory link in our memory. Think about a time when you said something you wish you hadn’t, and you keep hearing it over and over in your head. The same concept applies here.
Imagine that you wrote down and then said out loud, maybe a few times, “My voice is valuable and my opinion matters.” Maybe the next time you start to worry about something you said, this more positive and affirming statement coming from your own voice will remind you that what you have to say matters. It’s a mental muscle memory that starts to embed in our subconscious mind.
The more you affirm your values out loud, the stronger they will resonate.
Are affirmations permanent?
The results from affirmations can be permanent if you are consistent, just like developing an exercise habit or a healthy eating habit. It takes regularity and mental training for your thinking patterns to shift and for them to strengthen over time so they stick. An important part of the practice for lasting change is to reflect on whether the affirmations you choose are tied to deeper issues. If that is the case, then other interventions may be warranted to really get to the root of the matter, like journaling, talk therapy, or joining a process group.
I am not a professional, but what I am is someone who has tried all of the above over the last couple of decades. If it feels like there’s more to what you’re working on, BetterHelp is a good resource to explore.
How long do affirmations take to work?
If you regularly practice, training your mind to think positively and believe the truth of who you are, you can expect to start noticing a shift in your thinking in about two to three months. That range is based on an often-cited study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology which found that it takes about 66 days on average for new habits to become automatic. The exact amount time will vary person to person, but 2-3 months is a good benchmark to work from.
Affirmations Lists
Powerful affirmations for confidence
It is well studied and documented that there is a confidence gap between men and women. Evidence shows that women are less self-assured than men-and that to succeed, confidence matters as much as competence. This article in The Atlantic is a fascinating study on the confidence gap.
The authors also have this confidence quiz if you’re curious about how confident you are based on their rankings. I took the quiz and based on my answers I have a medium confidence level and they included useful tips on how to improve your confidence with the test results.
The point in sharing this is to support the fact that the truth of who you are as a good, worthy, important, valuable human being does not change based on if you believe it. It’s a fact and it’s true. Saying affirmations is only a reminder to yourself of that fact. In other words, the purpose isn’t to convince you of something just to make you feel better, but it’s really to remember the truth that you are enough just by because you are here, period.
- I am allowed to take up space
- I am confident and powerful
- I radiate confidence, self-respect, and inner peace
- I love and respect myself
- I am in full control of my life
- There is nothing I cannot overcome
- I am successful in everything I try
- I am smart enough to make my own decisions
- I am a good person
- I do not need validation from others
- I am becoming more confident each day
- I deserve all that is good
- My voice is valuable and my opinion matters
- I believe in my capabilities
- I am in command of how I react to others
- I am smart and able
- I am beautiful
- I am enough
Affirmations for self-forgiveness and healing
We are our own worst critics. We beat ourselves up for our past actions and obsess over how we could have said something better or done something differently. At least some of us, especially women, are professional self smack talkers.
It can be a lifelong practice to be gentle with ourselves and normalize our life experiences. This is one of those areas I have to focus on regularly, as I have a healthy dose of perfectionism and a dash of imposter syndrome.
- I am human
- I forgive myself
- I am allowed to make mistakes
- I acted in the best way I was able to at that moment
- My past is not a reflection of my future
- I have grown as a person
- I am grateful for improved insight and the chance to make a more desirable choice from now on
- I accept _________ about myself
- I permit myself to be at peace with ____________
- I consciously release the past and live only in the present
Morning affirmations for self-love
Starting your day off with powerful morning affirmations can frame the rest of the day with a positive mindset. If you are someone who likes to do morning meditations and using prompts, I linked a great 10 minutes meditation video with lots of morning affirmations for abundance, self-love, positivity, and spiritual connection below.
- The world needs me
- Today I choose happiness
- I deserve to be happy
- I choose peace
- I believe in myself
- Today is a fresh start
- Today is going to be a good day
- Every day is an opportunity to learn
- I will succeed today
- Today I will be my best
- I choose to stop apologizing for being myself
- I love my body and all it does for me
- I choose to be grateful for all that I have
- I attract wonderful people into my life
- I am creating a beautiful life
- I am worthy of love and attention
Powerful affirmations for money
Positive thinking around money is such a loaded issue. So many of us are stuck in this mind trap that we either don’t deserve wealth, or that there’s something “bad” about being rich, or that it’s impossible to imagine a reality where we don’t have to worry about money. That’s where the opportunity lays though in starting to shift our mindset to one where we can use the law of attraction in our affirmations for money.
If you don’t think you can achieve something, then you won’t set goals and steps to achieve those goals. Starting a mental exercise of thinking positively about growing abundance, building wealth, and having a healthy relationship to money is where it all begins.
- I deserve to flourish in life and be well-off.
- Money is a means to transform my life
- Money can expand the possibilities of my life
- I commit to spending my money sensibly
- Having money doesn’t make me a bad person
- I control money, it doesn’t dominate me
- I can be financially independent
- Money flows to me easily
- I have a plan of action so I am clear about my finances
- I am deserving of a stable financial foundation
- I can handle any barriers to achieve my money goals
Takeaways on practicing affirmations
Starting a practice of saying affirmations regularly can create new energy in your life in areas you want to grow in. There’s literally no downside to giving it a try and see how your thought patterns improve over time. If there are affirmations you have tried that have made a difference in your life, share them in the comments.
I hope you benefitted from reading this article and it inspired you to give affirmations a try.
You may also enjoy these posts:
- 3 Tips on How to Create a Vision Board to Manifest Your Dreams
- The Beginner’s Guide to Self-Care in 2021
- Discover 7 Must-Read Self-Help Books to Change Your Perspective
