Every year another round of people notice how difficult it is to accomplish their goals. Whether they are New Year’s resolutions, “January Gym Syndrome” or just regular old goals, people just have a hard time keeping motivated. Because of this issue, a lot of creative solutions have been made to help people stick with their goals. A new trend in 2021 is self affirmations, or repeating your goals out loud every day to remind yourself/hold yourself accountable.
2021 has been called “the year of mindfulness”, and many companies are making an effort to contribute to this trend. Selfpause, is a new startup that is helping people improve their lives and accomplish their goals through practicing positive self affirmations. Along with remembering and holding yourself accountable for your goals, studies have also shown positive affirmations to have a positive effect on:
- Improving personal confidence
- Improving athletic and career performance
- Improving productivity
- Decreasing stress and anxiety
To get a better idea about how positive affirmations help people hit their goals, I interviewed Jaeden Schafer, the CEO of Selfpause and a top contributor to the positive affirmation community online. Below you will find some highlights of our interview.
How do affirmations work psychologically, and how do they help us?
Jaeden: “Positive affirmations are a way for you to stop the negative self talk that goes on in your head and replace it with more positive thoughts. If you are unable to manually flip a switch in your brain that says ‘from now on always be positive’ then affirmations are a good way to do this.
Affirmations help you wire your brain to think of the positive in everything and to focus on achieving your goals.”
How do you typically use affirmations in your life?
Jaeden: “For me I find when I am having a hard time with something I repeat to myself ‘I’m happy, I’m healthy and I feel great’. This helps me find gratitude for what I have and change my mindset to avoid self pity which only slows me down.”
Do you think that affirmations help you accomplish goals or increases productivity?
Jaeden: “I find when I feel great or tell myself I feel great, I am in the mood to do actions that lead me towards my goals. When I feel crappy and choose not to change my mindset/look for the positive in the situation I am more prone to focus on the negative and do not feel like being productive.
So for me, affirmations help change my mindset and when I change my mindset I am a lot more productive and successful at accomplishing my goals. There are a lot of ways that affirmations help me but that is just one angle.”
How do positive affirmations contribute or help in high pressure situations such as sports?
Jaeden: “Positive affirmations are perfect for sports or any other high pressure and high performance task. For example, a lot of NFL players take time to meditate and visualize success before playing. Positive affirmations can help you rewire your brain to perform better and to be prepared for the game.
I used to prepare for triathlons, and training was the one area I found to be the hardest. Something I loved about affirmations was how I was able to use them to focus on areas I struggled with and turn those areas into my strengths.”
Where do you go or where would you recommend people go to get started with affirmations?
Jaeden: “Selfpause is a great spot to go to get inspiration on affirmations, our website has thousands of affirmations in dozens of areas. We are also working on making an app that will allow users to customize their affirmation experience and listen to professionally recorded affirmations.”
