How do you really BELIEVE your affirmations?
Like actually internalize them as truths, and not feel like you are just lying to yourself or just saying things you WISHED were true?
You have to validate them by thinking of experiences in your life when they have been true.
For example, if one of your daily affirmations is: “I am a kind spouse”, then the key is to take a moment to think back to real occasions when you have done kind things for your spouse. Validating your affirmations with real life experiences can not only remove the cognitive dissonance from feeling like you are lying to yourself, but it actually supercharges the psychological benefits or your affirmation.
I am a firm believer in the saying “What you feed grows”. Almost anything you can say about yourself is true in some sense or another. But by feeding the good things within, you grow and flourish into the good things yourself.
As you validate and affirm your affirmations to yourself, gradually it will have a positive impact on your self-perception.
At some point in the future you will be faced with a situation that will require you to either affirm or “betray” your self-perception (as The Arbinger Institute puts it in their book Leadership and Self Deception).
One of the greatest benefits from affirmation practice is the incredible (often subconscious) ways it impacts daily decision making situations. The most instinctive course of action is the one that validates your self-perception, so by validating and believing your affirmations, you are paving neural pathways in your mind that will effectively change how you instinctively react to situations.
As an example following along with the earlier affirmation “I am a kind spouse”.
Let’s say you get home and your spouse had a rough day, the house is a mess.
Faced with this situation, someone who regularly practices the above affirmation and believes it is more likely to think: “Because I am a kind spouse, I will respond by taking a kind action”.
This mindset and self perception shift can be powerful for relationships but also can reap amazing results when applied to all areas of your life.
If you are looking to improve your relationships, finances, stress levels, or health with affirmations, get started by downloading the Selfpause app. Create a habit of listening to an affirmation session each day. You will see amazing results, I promise!
