Power of Positive Affirmations

A few years ago I struggling brutally with the life I was living. I had very little confidence in myself and it was causing me to spiral downwards in a flow of negativity and dislike of my life. I knew that a change needed to happen and at first I immediately went to I need a new job, I need more money, and I need a new apartment.

What I quickly realized was that while those changes would help me they wouldn’t change me and in order for those changes to occur I needed to believe in myself a little bit more, I needed the confidence to stand up for myself and to take charge. While a multitude of little things went into these changes including just making a decision to change my mindset and not let myself spiral downwards again, but one thing that really helped me where positive affirmations. Statements to build that confidence and strength in myself again.

This wasn’t something that happened over night I had to stick with it, I had to stick with it every single day for a lot of months before I all of the sudden started noticing I was telling myself these things subconsciously and without prompt.

Positive affirmations are so simple and yet they are so powerful. Simply enough affirmation are statements that help us to change our subconscious brain to believe in ourselves. Often it is that subconscious brain that tells us the negative pieces in ourselves and that is what needs change. They help us to create intention and focus on ourselves, our goals, and the tasks we have throughout each day.

So how do you write positive affirmations? They are super simple, yet so powerful!

1. They are always written in the first person.
   By writing them in the first person using the words “I” or “I' am” you are turning the statement into an identity, allowing yourself to identify more directly with the statement.

2. They are always written as positive statements.
   It is easy to write things in the negative such as I will no longer eat donuts

3. Write your affirmations from space of emotion.
   The more you can bring emotion into your affirmation the more that you will connect to your statement.

Once you have these affirmation written down and ready you have to practice them. As mentioned they are not something you can just say once and they will be ingrained in our brains. You have to practice them. For me the best way was pen and paper, each morning I would sit down and write out each of my affirmations over and over again as if I was writing lines in school until I filled up the page;
- I am strong
- I am capable
- I am powerful
- I am enough
The more that I repeated these over and over the more that I eventually came to believe them. This is actually something I utilized later on in life as well when I was struggling a lot with my love for swimming, I started my I love swimming campaign and used that to help change my mindset about swimming.

You do not have to sit down and write out your affirmations, though there is a ton of power in doing so as it really becomes a part of your unconscious mind, you can write them out on a note card and display them in plain site so that you will constantly see them and repeat them. You can also merely read or repeat the affirmations from a list, and if you are very tech savy I believe there are even some apps for your phone that can help you with this!

So ask yourself, what intention do you want to bring to yourself? What can you change about your thought process that will improve your mindset or even bring gratitude and grace to yourself? If you can think of something then most likely you would benefit for some sort of positive affirmation exercises!!!

I know that for me they have been a huge help in changing my mindset in so many ways from helping to pull me out of my downward spiral of negativity and despair to just helping me to find joy in swimming during training!! I hope this helps you as much as it helped me!!

CHEERS!!

Kayla