Affirmations have been popular among working professionals for a very long time. Books such as Napoleon Hill’s 1937 Think and Grow Rich, or James Allen’s 1903 As a Man Thinketh helped to popularize ideas surrounding the power of our thoughts for both business titans and sales professionals.
While the concepts and benefits of affirmations have been widely discussed anecdotally, a new study demonstrates scientifically how self-affirming helps improve performance at work and eliminate performance gaps between employees and management.
How Affirmations Work
Self-affirmations work by retraining your brain to focus on the many truthful but overlooked qualities you have. By reminding yourself of your own successes, moments of strength, and true potential, you allow yourself to consciously and subconsciously identify with more powerful extensions of yourself and effectively act upon those perceived self-truths and change your life for the better.
“All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts.”
— James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
The Study
In a study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 282 participants were told that their negotiating skills were being tested, when in reality the experiment was testing the effect of positive affirmations.
The participants were asked to undergo certain tasks to evaluate their professional skills. After the first task, a large performance gap was found between professionals in upper management roles and those of lower-ranking positions.
Before the second round of skill evaluations, the participants with lower-ranking job positions were tasked to engage in a self-affirmation exercise before completing the negotiation exercise.
The results found that not only did the self-affirmation group increase their performance, it drastically diminished the performance gap in comparison to the higher ranking participants. The results demonstrated that simple affirmation exercises can have a huge effect on your professional performance and the performance of your team members within your organization.
Ready to try affirmations?
If you are ready to give your professional career a boost of greater confidence, higher performance, and more power, give positive affirmations a try. A great app that has tons of pre-recorded professional affirmations for everything from networking confidence to loving your work-day is Selfpause.
There is also a great area in the app to write, record, and meditate to your own personalized affirmations. Download it today and watch your professional career flourish!