How To Do An Affirmation

Doing a personal affirmation is one of the most effective self-help strategies in the world. This article will talk about what affirmations are, how to do them, and some examples.

Affirmations have been used as a practice for over 5,000 years. They were originally used by ancient civilizations such as India and Greece. It was not until the 20th century that people began using them for mental health purposes.

Today, they are very popular due to their effectiveness. Almost anyone can do them, even if you never done them before!

There are several types of affirmations, but the two main ones discussed here are positive thinking or thought exercises, and motivational affiramtions.

This article will focus on the second type, motivational affirmations. These are slightly different than your typical “I am rich” or “I wish I had a house with a swimming pool.”

A motivational affirmation should be short and simple, almost like a cliché. The classic example of this is something like “Money comes and goes, my life is lived between my wallet and my bank account.”

That kind of affirmation uses a concept called a metaphor. A metaphor compares one thing to another thing to make a statement. For instance, saying “money is the key to my happiness” would use a metaphorical comparison.

Helpful tips for affirmations

how to do an affirmation

Between learning how to do a proper relaxation exercise or practicing your affirmation skills, what next? Having someone else’s opinion doesn’t guarantee that you will feel better about yourself, so don’t expect it to!

No one but you can truly determine if this process is working for you, so only look at your inner voice and how you are feeling when you practice your affirmations.

It may take some time before you see results, but keep trying out your new skill and give yourself more time to know whether these exercises work for you.

If you need help along the way, there are several online resources available where you can find supportive messages and/or audio recordings of self-affirmations. Some of these are free while others have paid apps or subscription services depending on how frequently you use them.

Examples of affirmations

how to do an affirmation

Doing an affirmation is one of the most simple ways to create more confidence in yourself or reduce self-defeating thoughts. All you need to do is make a statement that focuses on your current good state and then add the word “I” and then repeat the statement.

The I comes at the end because it creates a sense of completion, making the thought feel better. You can also try adding the word “me” after the I instead of just using “I.” This adds some specificity to the thought which makes it easier to focus on specifically who this idea benefits.

Your mind will quickly conclude that since you are saying these words, you must mean them so they cannot cause internal conflict. The rest of the body automatically mirrors what the brain thinks so by repeating these statements out loud, your subconscious believes them too!

Examples of affirmations include telling yourself something like ‘I am strong enough now to handle my money’ or ‘My career is going great, I have no reason to be nervous about it.

Helpful questions to ask yourself

how to do an affirmation

One of my favorite ways to do affirmations is by asking myself some helpful questions. These are called self-statements or internal statements.

You can make your own set of these questions and use them for different things, but I will go through the ones that work particularly well for doing affiramtions. You can add in more powerful versions of these if you like!

The first one comes from Tony Robbins, who created this technique. He calls it his “beginner’s mind.” The idea here is that when you have no assumptions about something, then you can learn new information about the thing with less bias.

So instead of thinking, ‘I don’t know anything about meditation, so I won’t try it,’ you could say, ‘I wonder what mediation is?’ or ‘What does it mean to be meditative?’

This way you are not making any assumptions about what it should be, you just want to learn as much as possible. It may help you find your inner peace or whatever else it is that you hope to get out of it.

[Something personal]

My favorite type of affirmation is one where you put yourself in the place of someone else. This creates empathy which helps you relate better to other people, and sometimes needed inspiration to motivate you to do things.

Creating an affirmation ritual

how to do an affirmation

One of the most effective ways to use affirmations is in creating an affirmation ritual. This can be done every day, weekly, monthly, or yearly depending on how frequently you want your thoughts to work.

Affirmations are usually one word statements that emphasize positive thinking. Yours could be something like “I will succeed today” or “None of my friends believe I can do this!”

Your affirmation can be about anything – from personal to professional life. They can be for yourself (like saying “I am more intelligent than I think I am”) or for someone else (“My colleague cannot seem to figure out what he should be doing, so I will help him move forward”).

Whatever you add into your ritual can be fun, emotional, or both! Keep it natural and focus on what you want to achieve.

You can make your ritual as short or long as you desire. Some people only need 10 minutes to feel relaxed and refreshed after their practice, while others take longer to get the same benefits.

What matters is that you form a habit of consistency and find a time frame that works for you.

Time to reflect

how to do an affirmation

Doing an affirmation is more than just saying what you want to achieve, it’s also about listening to how you feel when you do it.

When you put your intention into action, you will probably feel some sort of emotion. You may feel happy, confident or relaxed depending on what you are affirming for.

Some people find that their affirmations make them think about things they want, so they can add those thoughts to the affirmation. That way, his/her affirmation becomes both a goal and a motivation!

You can use this technique in the space between reading your affirmation and going to sleep at night. Just like telling yourself ‘good morning’ before getting out of bed, making an affirmative statement helps set a positive tone and mentality.

Keep an open mind

how to do an affirmation

Doing an affirmation is not like talking about yourself for very long; it takes less than a minute to do! It’s easy to start with your own personal affirmations, but you can also make ones related to your career or life as we have discussed before.

By using the power of positive thinking, you are creating a mental picture in your head of what you want to happen. By doing this repeatedly, you begin to associate those thoughts with action, helping to create success and changes that earlier didn’t occur without it.

Your subconscious mind will eventually take over and apply these new skills and behaviors.

Use it or lose it

how to do an affirmation

Doing affirmations is not a once-and-done thing. You have to stick with this practice for some time before you can expect results. It takes repeated effort to achieve your goals, which are usually to improve your life or increase your self-confidence.

That’s why doing an affirmation every now and then isn’t very effective. The mind gets used to being told what life should be like, and eventually, it stops believing in changes.

If you stop practicing affirmations, they will no longer work. This could happen if you forget how to do them, or something happens that makes you feel bad about yourself.

Luckily, there is a way to avoid this! By using a tool called binaural beats, you can create hissing sounds that sync up with certain parts of an affirmation. These paired tones influence brainwave frequencies, creating a more profound effect than just listening to music alone.

Practice makes perfect

how to do an affirmation

Doing affirmations is not like talking to yourself, you will need to practice for it to work. Even more important than practicing in the beginning is to do so consistently!

It may feel tedious at first but with time, affirmative prayer will become second nature.

You can start by saying your affirmation out loud or simply thinking of your affirmation before going to sleep. Over time, you can increase the length of time and how frequently you practice.

Your subconscious mind does not care about having a big deal next week, it only cares about today so it will eventually learn. Keep working on it until it becomes second nature.