The power of positive affirmations

Last year when I was going through my year-long cancer treatment, one of the things I started doing was turning  my attention daily to positive affirmations.  Never before have I been the type to do these kind of rituals, buts it’s amazing what you will try in the face of a health crisis and I can tell you I’m glad I did.  You don’t have to be going through a health crisis to benefit from the power of positive affirmations either.  Any challenges that you face in your day-to-day life can be helped by using positive affirmations and repeating them to yourself daily.

I bought a white board marker and wrote positive affirmations on the bathroom mirror so that every time I went to brush my teeth or sit on the toilet there they were staring back at me and I just had to read them.  It is quite amazing that something like this that is so simple and easy can have such a profound effect on how you feel throughout the day.  Whatever you are affirming to yourself daily will slowly sink into your subconscious and will become true for you.

How often have you actually stopped to really listen to that little voice inside your head and hear what it is saying to you?  A lot of the time you will find that we are very critical of ourselves, always thinking I’m too fat, I’m too thin, I’m stupid for having dropped that glass, I’m not good enough, I wish I was more beautiful and the list goes on.  If we continue to affirm to ourselves all of these negative thoughts on a daily basis, we can’t help but make them our reality and they become true for us.  Your subconscious does not have a sense of humour and what I mean by that is that if you are continually thinking negative thoughts like “I’m not good enough”, you will very quickly become not good enough because you have repeatedly told yourself that, that is what you have come to believe and that thought has become true for you.

Why not just for one day start off by being conscious of your thought patterns and instead of being negative, make a point of saying positive thoughts to yourself throughout the day and see how you feel.  If you are looking for some inspirational quotes, there are heaps on Pinterest under the category ‘quotes’ or just type into google ‘positive affirmations’ they are free and easy to access.  Write down the ones that resonate with you on your bathroom mirror or somewhere that you look often, this practice has the ability to literally change your life.  There is a great iPhone app called ‘Affirm your life’ that delivers positive affirmations direct to your iPhone or iPad daily and only costs $4.  You can even make up your own affirmations up depending on what is going on in your life.  One affirmation that I used to read regularly when I was going through chemo was “I am happy and healthy and have a long life ahead of me, everything is going to be okay”.  That affirmation was just right for that time in my life and it worked wonders for me.

What challenges are you currently facing in your life that could benefit from the power of positive affirmations?