Positive affirmations are little sayings or phrases repeated daily to help change your state of mind.

Positive affirmations can provide emotional support & encouragement and can calm you when you feel fear & uncertainty.

Positive affirmations can help rewire your brain in a happy direction & help develop your inner confidence.

You may be thinking, “Really? Little sayings or phrases can do that?”

So let me explain how they work.

We operate from an operating system built around beliefs that we have created about ourselves, our lives, and the world around us. Our belief systems prompt us to take action and help us make meaning of life events.

These beliefs are actually just thoughts on repeat. You’ve thought that particular thought so much that it wore deep grooves in your brain/psyche. It now runs on auto-pilot. You aren’t even aware, most of the time, that the belief is there.

It’s kind of like walking. When you were a baby, it took considerable effort to learn to walk, but once you practiced enough, walking became second nature. You don’t have to consciously tell yourself to move your legs in order to walk.

Some research suggests that on average, we think 60,000 thoughts per day–and 80% of those thoughts are negative.

Our minds have evolved with a negativity bias–a tendency to live in a state of vigilance and anxiety–running negative simulations of past regret or future harm and remembering the bad instead of the good.

In prehistoric days, it was necessary for survival to always be on the lookout for danger & perilous situations. The prehistoric man had to watch for human-eating animals, poisonous plants, harsh living conditions, and so much more.

Our every-day stressors are not life-threatening like they were then. Our stressors are psychological & social.

Like reacting to finances, workplace drama, relationship conflict, pressure to perform/conform, and so much more.

In response to our stressful thoughts, our brains search for the danger as a way to keep us safe, and thus, find all the negative B.S. it can find.

This isn’t just true for adults; it’s also true for our kids who are also under constant stress and worry from our modern world. They too are affected by finances, workplace/school-place drama, relationship conflict, pressure to perform/conform, and so much more.

The trick in changing the mostly negative belief systems we operate from–especially the beliefs we have formed about ourselves– is to learn to recognize/catch the automatic negative thoughts and swap them out for better serving thoughts.

That’s where positive affirmations come in.

Positive affirmations are essentially INTENTIONAL thoughts–thoughts we consciously choose to think.

But just like the thoughts we thought that created our initial belief systems, our new, intentional positive thoughts must also be thought on repeat long enough to become automatic.

When we catch a negative thought/limiting belief, we create a positive affirmation to counter that belief.

For example, you might find yourself thinking that you are bad with money, so you counter that thought with, “I can manage my money” or “I am learning to manage my money.”

Affirmations work best when they are countering negative thoughts you are actually thinking, but sometimes, our brains want to tell us that we don’t know how to create affirmations (which keeps us from taking action), so I have generated a list of 10 affirmations below to help get you started.

• I possess the qualities I need to be successful.
• Today, I am thankful for new experiences.
• I am full of energy and optimism.
• I am ready to find joy today.
• I am filled with energy for all the daily activities in my life.
• I love to smile; it is my gift to the world.
• I will not worry about tomorrow; I will enjoy this day instead.
• I can choose to see my circumstances differently.
• I have many things to be grateful for.
• I am willing to find happiness today.

Use them in your journaling, set them as reminders on your phone, say them out loud, write them on post-it notes and post them everywhere–car dashboard, bathroom mirror, computer monitor.

The idea here is that when you find yourself thinking a negative thought, you quickly replace that thought with a positive affirmation.

Struggling to stop the daily, never-ending stream of negative thoughts flooding your brain?

Click HERE to request a FREE session.

In this session we will chat about what’s going on for you and work to create a solution. You can have better-serving thoughts in less than 45 minutes.