Affirmations- What Are They and Do They Really Work?
“I am smart.” “I am lovable.” “I am strong.” These are examples of affirmations, positive statements designed to promote a positive view of yourself. Have you been told that if you say affirmations like these every day that you will come to believe it? Do you wonder if it really works? The truth is both yes and no. Affirmations CAN change what you believe about yourself, but it doesn’t happen magically. Let’s look at the “how” and the “why” behind using affirmations to change your view of yourself.
The Science of Affirmations
First, let’s look at neuroscience. Our brain is composed of neurons which make connections that help us learn, but what is it that we learn? We learn what we direct our brain to learn. We train our brain to look for evidence of what we tell it to look for.
Here is an example: if we decide we want a new car, we start looking for what kind of car we want and eventually choose a car. We are telling our brain that the car we have chosen is important. All of a sudden, we see that type of car all over the place. That car company didn’t magically put more of those cars on the road. Rather, our brain is just now pointing them out to us because we decided that car was important.
In essence, you are creating myelin sheaths, insulation for the axons inside the neurons of your brain. This helps your brain make connections faster. Affirmations are all about neuron training and strengthening positive neural pathways in your brain.
How to Apply this Science
Let’s take this neuron training and apply it to affirmations. If I tell myself every day that I am stupid, my brain will look for evidence that I am stupid. I will notice all the things that occurred throughout the day, and I will see them through this lens of me being stupid. I will further believe that I am stupid.
The same is true if I tell myself that I am smart. My brain will find evidence that I am, in fact, smart. Through this lens, I will interpret the same events throughout the day differently. The small mistake that I made at work will be interpreted by my brain differently, not as “you are stupid for making that error,” but as, “that was smart the way you caught that error before completing the entire report.”
The event was the same, but your focus was different. You do not magically become smarter by telling yourself every day that you are smart. Instead, you are asking your brain to focus on, and find evidence of, how smart you really are.
So, does it really matter what “lens” we tell our brain to look through as we view ourselves? ABSOLUTELY!
Often, we have an automatic tendency to look at ourselves through a negative, mean and often harmful lens. We are critical and hurtful in the things we say and feel about ourselves. Affirmations can change the lens that we look through. We each deserve to have our brains look for and show us evidence of our unique and amazing qualities. We each deserve to see ourselves in a more realistic and compassionate light. Affirmations can help change what our brain focuses on and acknowledge as important.
What Affirmations to Say?
Given what you’ve learned so far in this blog, maybe you have decided to give affirmations a try, but how do you know what to say?
Imagine, for a moment, that one of the favorite persons in your life walked into the room. What would you want to hear them say to you about you? The first couple things that popped into your head are likely the affirmations that you would most like to hear, meaning the words they said to you are likely what you would like to start believing about yourself. Those are the affirmations you might want to start with. If they seem overwhelming or unbelievable to you, start with something simpler and work towards those initial affirmations.
Write the affirmations on your mirror, on a post-it note by your computer or anywhere you will see them frequently. Say them out loud multiple times a day. Let your brain know they are important to you, and you will begin to see evidence that they are true. These affirmations are not magically changing who you are. You have been that person all along. The evidence has always been there; you are just finally now seeing it for yourself.
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