So many of us work hard to improve our self-esteem and self-confidence and one of the common strategies for making improvements is to use affirmations. Affirmations are statements that we can use as a form of positive self-talk in order to get into the habit of substituting negative thoughts about ourselves to positive thoughts. You might be considering using affirmations for yourself or even for your child.
If you were to pay attention to all of your thoughts in a given day and to count all of the negative things you say to yourself in a single twenty-four hour period, how many negative thoughts about yourself would you guess you say to yourself? Five? Fifty? Five hundred? Some studies estimate that we have over fifteen thousand thoughts in a given day and that, conservatively, over 75% of those thoughts are self-judging thoughts. That can be over eleven thousand negative thoughts in a single day!
Think of that! Thousands of negative thoughts in a single day!
We know that it is our thoughts, conscious and unconscious, that strongly impact our mood for the day, that can limit our sense of personal power, that can impact how we feel about ourselves, including how hopeful we are in life, and can even affect our physical health. As a part of good self care, affirmations are often recommended or used to lift our moods, to improve our thoughts of ourselves, and to remind us to speak kindly to ourselves. You can see how you might use affirmations to help your child with their own thinking patterns.
But there might be a huge problem for some of us when using affirmations. They can feel incredibly unrealistic, absurd, and unbelievable.
I attract positivity to myself!
I am successful in whatever I do!
I feel an abundance of joy!
Today will be amazing!
Money comes to me easily and effortlessly.
I get love in abundance.
I'm always on my own side!
I can perform perfectly at school!
I am blessed with an incredible friend group!
If these affirmations are untrue I might become very resentful of someone encouraging them. I might even feel shame that such statements have no positive impact on me.
If you are one of those people who feel annoyed by, bewildered by, shamed, or just turned off by affirmations, here’s an idea. Consider an entirely different type of affirmation, something I call the Neutral Affirmation. These statements are neutral but true. They are the kind of thoughts you might have that would remind you to lay off of the self-criticism or judging of self and to, instead, use rational and true statements to challenge the negativity.
Here are a few examples of Neutral Affirmations:
- Some days are harder than others; I’m doing my best today.
Today I’m OK. - I’m working on accepting me just as I am
- Feelings are not facts.
- I can ride this wave and get back to work.
- Professionals ask for support every day.
- With time and effort, I’m getting better.
- I’m smart and capable.
- I can handle this.
- I’m not going to give up.
- I know who is on my side. First, I am.
- Just for today I will...
- I’m going to say something positive to myself instead.
- I’ll give it another try.
- Tomorrow is another day.
- I will not judge myself on cultural stereotypes.
- I can feel the fear and do it anyway.
- I am doing active work to improve my life.
- I notice I handle things better when I correct my limiting thought
distortions. - I’m not feeling confident, but I’ll still do my best work today.
Using Neutral Affirmations do not offer pie-in-the sky sentiment or artificial optimism to correct negative self-talk, but, rather, realistic, believable, logical, true statements to remind us to nip the black and white thinking in the bud. Neutral Affirmations can prompt our thoughts to challenge the many habits of distorted thoughts that we use regularly without even being aware of it. We are already thinking thousands of thoughts each day, why not work to deliberately improve what we feed our minds!
Work with yourself or with your child (or with your therapist) to create a list of neutral affirmations that can address your specific thought distortions.
What do YOU think?
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