Are you looking to add a bit more positivity to your life?
You want to feel the bliss of waking up in the morning and feel positive about everything.
You want love your life, love your body, and love your job (that you truly hate).
You make a list of affirmations. Putting a smile on your face you repeat those affirmations ten times in the morning and ten times at night.
A few days or weeks may go by and maybe you are sticking to your affirmations or maybe you have let them drop off. Either way you are probably finding that repeating these positive phrases have not made a large impact in your life.
The reason why those affirmations are not working is because you are not addressing the true area that you need to change.
The areas that you are using affirmations for are usually areas that you may go as far as to describe that you hate. Hate, as we are always reminded, is a strong word. Which is why it is so difficult to go from that place of hatred about our body or our job to loving it and thinking it is perfect.
The good news is that it is not impossible to change how you feel about those things! I am going to guide you through what you can use to really see an impact in how you feel about your body, your job, your relationships, or anything else you want to change your feelings about using realistic affirmations.
What is an Affirmation?
What most people refer to when they talk about affirmations are positive phrases that repeat a number of times to change how they feel about a certain area of their life.
Merriam-Webster defines affirmations as the act of affirming. Essentially, you are saying that something is true.
The guidance on using affirmations is to create a list of affirmations you want to use and write them down. Then repeat for a set number of times for a certain number of days. This can range anywhere from three times a day for thirty days or even 100 times a day for a whole year!
That is a lot of repeating phrases and a lot of people don’t end up seeing the results that they want.
Why Affirmations Don’t Work
Repeating affirmations is a way of trying to trick or force yourself into believing those feelings. Repeating 100 times that you love your body is more than likely not going to make you love your body.
Consider how large of a gap it is to move from I hate my body to I love my body. That is a huge jump! Most brains cannot make that switch so easily.
Take this to an extreme example, you are asked to attend a group gathering think a church or social group with a very specific message. This new group has a completely different view point than yours. Nothing is the same and it goes against all your beliefs. You are expected to attend this group and repeat their message.
Chances are you are going to leave that gathering going, “yeah, I’ll say it but I don’t believe it.”
That is what you are doing with affirmations. You are using a phrase that goes against what you believe to be true. You don’t believe that you love your body or that your job is great and just introducing a phrase that you repeat every morning isn’t going to magically change the way you feel because you are saying.
Before you Change the way you feel
Most people want to jump into fixing how they feel about something when they are experiencing a negative emotion missing an important step. To change the way you feel you first need to understand why you feel that way.
Take the time to understand what makes you have those negative emotions. Before you can change it, you have to understand where it is starting.
Now this is not the time for you to be hard on yourself. Quite the opposite, approach yourself the way you would with a friend with compassion and really wanting to understand.
Once you understand why you feel that way the next step is to change the way you feel.
How to change how you feel
One of the reasons that affirmations are not effective for so many people is because they don’t believe the words that they are saying. It is not enough to have a positive phrase that you repeat to yourself.
You need to believe it, really believe, in what you are saying to change the way you feel.
Now some of you I know are saying, “well I don’t believe that I love my body so what is the point in trying”. The point is that you can get to loving your body. You just have some stops to make along the way.
Jumping to the phrase I love my body is going to be too far of a jump for a lot of people. Instead find a phrase that you believe about your body that doesn’t bring about negative thoughts. It doesn’t even have to bring about positive thoughts.
It may even be something along the lines of, “I have a body and it works.”
That phrase may or may not work for you. You need to find one that you believe. No one can tell you what that phrase is. You have to determine what you believe and what will work for you.
You can’t trick yourself into believing something but you can guide it there building upon statements that evoke emotions on the path to positivity.
You still aren’t seeing the results
There is going to be times that you use a phrase to try to change how you feel and you tell yourself that you believe it.
Question yourself. Question yourself the way you question your best friend when they get back with that man that’s terrible for them. Do you really think they have changed?
Do you really believe?
That is the key to this whole process. Believe in the phrases that you use.
If, the process isn’t working, it isn’t the process.
This is the tough part. We so badly want things to get better we often try to rush it.
If, you could rush it, if you could just wake up and believe those perfect positive phrases, wouldn’t a lot more people be happy a lot more of the time?
That just isn’t the reality, it will take work and it will take you being true to what you believe.
Final Thoughts
Affirmations have been passed around for a long time as a way to bring positivity into your life.
Yet, so many people that have used it are not seeing the results that they expected to.
The reasons they aren’t seeing those results is because they don’t understand why they feel that way in the first place. Then they are trying to immediately change that negative emotion to maximum positivity using phrases they don’t believe in.
You can’t play a trick on yourself to make you believe those phrases. You are smarter than that and you know your own tricks.
Check yourself, make sure you aren’t telling yourself empty phrases. Those aren’t going to get you the results you want.
If, you find yourself still not experiencing what you expected go back through the process. The process works you just have to commit and be true to yourself.
Massive transformations take time. The time is worth it to see the results and to start gaining positivity in your life.
Small steps are still steps.
Do not be hard on yourself through this shift! You are going to make mistakes you are going to have to work at it. But it will be so worth it, you are so worth it and it is so possible.
