Positive Affirmations: Powerful and Underused

My body and my mind are strong and powerful. Noise and distractions fade into silence. I am perfectly capable of getting this done. I breathe with control, slowly and gently. –These are just a few examples of “self-talk” that are positive affirmations: statements we think (or say) to ourselves designed to help us build an optimistic mindset¹. Consider those affirmations and notice they could be used by an athlete before a game, a student before a presentation, a person exercising, and even a mother in labor. In fact, there’s research showing affirmations like these are helpful in every single one of those scenarios.

The Goal of Affirmations? To steady the mind and body by talking to ourselves positively and intentionally. The Science of Affirmations? It works! (We’ll get into this). The Problem with Affirmations? Most of us are guilty of thinking that these kinds of statements are “cheesy, “corny,” or “unhelpful” and so we don’t harness their power as often as we could- and I’ll be so bold as to add, as often as we should.

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How Positive Affirmation Helps the Body and the Brain:

Positive self-affirmation has been linked to better academic performance², sports performance, health³, and emotional well-being⁴. Basically, self-affirmation helps get us into the right state of mind to take on challenges. As just one example, it can help athletes keep themselves calm, cool, and collected in the face of game day stress⁵. As an example for students, positive affirmation has been shown to help them feel less anxious and more capable before presentations⁶.

Biofeedback: Our thoughts can easily cause bodily changes. Just think of how when stuck in traffic worrying about arriving late, your pulse and heartrate quicken. Lots of studies have echoed that the power of the mind can create a change in our body. One such study used something called emwave HRV biofeedback (that monitors heartrate) to show that positive affirmation practice for 5 minutes a day over 4 weeks reduced anxiety before class presentations⁷.

The takeaway? A small daily exercise like listening to a guided affirmation video can literally change the way you handle life.

fMRI Technology: Neuroscience studies have discovered that brain activity in certain decision making areas of the brain actually increases during self-affirmation practice. Using fMRI technology to scan the brain, one study found that positive self-affirmation increased activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex region in the brain. Activity in that particular brain region made it more likely that people would engage in more positive behavior for their wellbeing following the self-affirmation practice⁸. What’s interesting is that it seems positive self-affirmation helps people approach stressful situations as challenging instead of threatening.

What’s interesting is that it seems positive self-affirmation helps people approach stressful situations as challenging instead of threatening.

A key difference is that challenges are to be overcome while threats are to be avoided. Those who practice self-affirmation feel more confident that they can handle stress, which in turn helps them do so⁹. We can see how this would be the case, because it makes a ton of sense that telling yourself every day you are capable and in control would make you feel more capable and in control. The athlete feels in the zone; the student knows they have it in them to give the presentation; the person exercising knows their body and mind is capable of persevering.

How Do I Practice Positive Affirmations?

In my practice, many young adults have told me that they find it devastatingly uncomfortable to say and repeat nice things to themselves. I often hear things like “I don’t want to get a big ego,” “It feels weird to talk to myself” and, most especially, “I don’t actually believe those things about myself.” In other words, self-affirmation feels threatening to them, and they don’t want to try it. So, the very thing that can help them cope better with threats also seems threatening! This is a normal reaction and, often, expected. Self-affirmation helps create an optimistic mindset, so if someone has a more pessimistic outlook, then it makes sense that optimism would feel threatening and uncomfortable. The easiest way to challenge yourself here would be to start slow, consider the science and evidence showing it’s helpful, and try to be open-minded about the process, saving your judgments and evaluations for after you’ve gained some firsthand experience.

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Practical Exercises

Find Youtube Videos. Consider what challenge you’re facing: does it have to do with your health? Friends? Family? School? Work? Youtube is full of relaxing guided self-affirmation videos for all of the above. Find one you like and listen to it in a quiet comfortable space. You can do so while working on something else or while closing your eyes and relaxing. Even a 5 minute video here and there will help.

Search Spotify. Music and podcast apps also have many of these guided affirmation tracks available. If you prefer to listen rather than brainstorm your own affirmations, apps like Spotify are a great resource.

Write Them Down. Think of the challenge you’re facing and try to brainstorm a handful of positive self-affirmations. As you brainstorm, write them down. There’s lots of research out there about the connections between physically writing something down and processing it better in our mind. It helps us go from “passive” to “active”.

Create a Poster. If you’d rather read your affirmations, create a poster or print one off and hang it somewhere you can often see it, like a wall in your bedroom. Try to be intentional about reading it each day.

Recite Your Favorite Affirmations. When you do find a few affirmations that feel especially relevant to you (whether you heard them via video or brainstormed them yourself), practice repeating them to yourself a few times each day. The more you practice, the more fluid and normal it feels.

Build It Into Your Routine. Ideally, positive self-affirmation practice would become part of your regular routine. For example, listening to a guided video for 5 minutes every night before bed. Or as another example, writing down three positive affirmations every morning. Or, saying two positive affirmations aloud every morning in the mirror. However you decide to incorporate it into your schedule, making it part of a routine will help you stay consistent.

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Affirmations for Focus and Learning:

Noise and distractions fade into silence

I am perfectly capable of learning

My mind was designed to learn and grow

I focus solely on the task at hand

Affirmations for Performance:

I breathe with control, slowly and gently

I am doing my best with what I know

My mind is still, my body is calm

I am flexible and open to change

I answer to the best of my abilities and move on

I pause, breathe, and take each challenge one at a time

Affirmations for Social Connections:

I am worthy of love and friendship

I build healthy and solid relationships with people

I make friends naturally with ease

I attract positive people into my life

I am welcoming new people into my life every day

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References

Bakner, E., & Martin, N. (2016). Coherence monitoring with emwave biofeedback to decrease college student presentation anxiety. In International Journal of Exercise Science: Conference Proceedings (Vol. 8, No. 4, p. 26).

Baltzell, A., & Akhtar, V. L. (2014). Mindfulness meditation training for sport (MMTS) intervention: Impact of MMTS with division I female athletes. The Journal of Happiness & Well-Being, 2(2), 160-173.https://mindfulness4u.org/wp-content/themes/wbgxt77mjxrd20qcb0vp5129109/files/frontend/articles/pdf/v02i02/6.pdf

Blascovich, J., & Mendes, W. B. (2000). Challenge and threat appraisals: The role of affective cues. In J. Forgas (Ed.), Feeling and thinking: The role of affect in social cognition (pp. 59–82). Paris: Cambridge University Press.

Cohen, G. L., Garcia, J., Apfel, N., & Master, A. (2006). Reducing the racial achievement gap: a social psychological intervention. Science, 313, 1307– 1310.

Falk, E. B., O’Donnell, M. B., Cascio, C. N., Tinney, F., Kang, Y., Lieberman, M. D., ... & Strecher, V. J. (2015). Self-affirmation alters the brain’s response to health messages and subsequent behavior change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(7), 1977-1982.

Harris, P. R, & Epton, T. (2009). The impact of self affirmation on health cognition, health behaviour and other health-related responses: a narrative review. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3, 962–978.

Lee, M. M., Turetsky, K. M., & Spicer, J. (2017). Cognitive, social, physiological, and neural mechanisms underlying self‐affirmation: An integrative review. Yale Review of Undergraduate Research in Psychology.

Rana, M. (2018) Positive affirmations and its benefits on psychological well-being. EDU WORLD, 5.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ashok-Acharya-2/publication/348805443_EDU_WORLD_VOL_IXNO2/links/60111b89299bf1b33e2904f8/EDU-WORLD-VOL-IX-NO2.pdf#page=20

The Science of Deep Breathing: Simplified

“Just breathe” is a phrase we hear all the time, especially when we seem visibly stressed. The certainty with which it is directed at us tells us that something about breathing is supposed to help us feel calm and relaxed. And help it does- we know that deep breathing can lead people to feel less anxiety, self-doubt, and nervousness, while also helping them to feel more focused (Paul, Elam, and Verhulst, 2007). People report feeling better, but does it really have any effect inside the body? To answer that, we need to revisit our high school biology class (where's Ms. Frizzle when you need her?).

The beneficial effects of "deep breathing" have to do with the relationship between our “rest and digest” system (aka the parasympathetic nervous system) and our “fight or flight” system (AKA our sympathetic nervous system). These two systems work in sweet harmony and will function without any conscious effort on our part. That said, both deep breathers and self-critical thinkers around the globe have realized that they can in fact activate one system over the other with a bit of extra work.

both deep breathers and self-critical thinkers around the globe have realized that they can in fact activate one system over the other with a bit of extra work.

Keep in mind that while a threat used to be a bear in the woods, modern day threats can include anything from being stuck in traffic, to a job interview, to self-criticism, to the fear of failure. Unfortunately, our stress response is not so good at differentiating between a real or a perceived threat, so it will activate regardless of the type of stressor. That’s why even things like intense and prolonged self-criticism can create a stress response in the body. When we are stressed, our “fight or flight” system activates. Our heart beats faster and our pulse quickens. Blood vessels leading to our heart and large muscles dilate, allowing more blood through so that you can essentially fight or escape whatever threat is causing that stress. If stress stays for a while, our body can become flooded with stress hormones like cortisol that can lead to cardiovascular health issues.

When we relax or rest, it’s finally time for our “rest and digest” system to shine. This system slows down that racing heart, it decreases blood pressure and fixes any dry mouths, and energy is redirected to digestion. Simplified, it has the opposite effect on our body than our fight or flight system, so it helps our bodies maintain balance. Within our rest and digest system is something called the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is a cranial nerve complex that is connected to many glands and organs (Berthoud and Neuhuber, 2000). Basically, the vagus nerve is a superstar of our rest and digest system because of its involvement in so many functions. Here’s the really neat thing about the vagus nerve: It’s actually modulated by respiration, which means that when we exhale it activates, and when we inhale it is suppressed (Gerritsen and Guido, 2018). Following that connection, we see that deep breathing works to calm us because it increases our vagal activity and decreases the activity of our fight or flight system. That’s why studies looking at the effectiveness of deep breathing also find that it can lower heart rate and cortisol stress levels (Perciavalle et al., 2016) and lower blood pressure levels (Mori et al., 2005). To jump start our vagus nerve, then, we want to make sure we are exhaling longer so that it has time to work its magic on our rest and digest system.

we see that deep breathing works to calm us because it increases our vagal activity and decreases the activity of our fight or flight system.

So, is there any difference when it comes to breathing exercises?

There are all sorts of breathing exercises that are taught; common exercises you might have heard of include 4-7-8 or finger breathing. It doesn’t really matter which technique you prefer. We know from the research that, regardless of the technique, what’s important is that:

• The exhale is longer than the inhale (that’s going to activate your vagus nerve. Remember that it is the celebrity of our rest and digest system and “comes to life” during exhale)
  

• The breath is a deep one, meaning it comes from the diaphragm and not the chest (you can practice by putting a hand on your stomach while you breathe; you should feel it extending outward. If you’re breathing deeply and exhaling longer, chances are you’re doing diaphragmatic/belly breathing anyway)

My favourite breathing exercise involves finding what breathing rhythm fits best for your body and lung capacity. I’ll count the seconds starting from 1 and ask the other person to flag me down when they feel just full enough of air but not too full. Then I’ll count the seconds of their exhale. The goal is to make sure that they can extend the exhale for at least two seconds past their inhale, ensuring it is longer. It’s quite common for young adults to have an inhale of 4 seconds and an exhale of 6-7 seconds. If they can’t make it to that exhale mark, then we change the inhale to 3 seconds and the exhale to 5 seconds. The takeaway: Deep breathing does change what’s going on inside of our bodies by activating our vagus nerve, which is part of the system that will turn off our stress response. The longer you breathe and the more frequently you practice, the more likely you are to notice a calming effect.

The takeaway: Deep breathing does change what’s going on inside of our bodies by activating our vagus nerve, which is part of the system that will turn off our stress response. The longer you breathe and the more frequently you practice, the more likely you are to notice a calming effect.

Gaming on the Brain (literally)

Tech: Self-care, self-improvement, or both? It’s tough to imagine a world without smartphones, electronics, and gaming consoles. Sure, we can retreat into the backwaters of our mind and pull out a few funny stories about the infamous dial-up tone, the three-day song download, and having to re-watch the guide channel because we got distracted four times at the wrong moment. Even these memories involve some kind of technology, and our familiarity with the resources at our fingertips have only increased. In 2015, 86% percent of young adults owned a smartphone, 78% owned a computer, and over half owned a gaming console (Anderson, 2015).

Technology is so familiar to us that many of us have incorporated its usage into our definition of self-care. Watching Netflix, playing video games, and zoning out on an app are things we identify as being relaxing, calming, or entertaining. So, if these activities can be part of our self-care, do they also have researched benefits for our brains? What about the claims that video games help our memory and coordination? I took these questions and delved deep into the research to try and get some answers.

Gaming and “The Transfer Effect”

Whether a video game can help us with real life skills will depend on something called the Transfer Effect. Transfer refers to how much a gaming skill can transfer to your real life. For example, Israeli Air Force flight school cadets who played the game Space Fortress which requires players to focus attention to multiple demanding tasks (Boot et al., 2009) performed significantly better on actual flight performance than the control group (Gopher, Weil, & Baraket, 1994). In fact, Space Fortress was added to the training program of the Israeli Air Force because of the demonstrated transfer effect between in-game play and real-world performance (Boot et al., 2009) .

Some games improve our abilities just for the short-term; in this case, they are said to have “near-transfer.” Here’s an example. After at least 30 rounds of Bejeweled Blitz, people performed better at a searching task, but only immediately after playing their rounds of Bejeweled Blitz; the brain boost didn’t seem to last (Stroud and Whitborne, 2015). What does this mean for us? Well, if you’re about to be in a word-search championship, then 30 rounds of Bejeweled might help you warm up. Do with that information what you will.

So at this point we’ve discovered that “near-transfer” doesn’t last for long, and to have any lasting benefits, we need a game to have “far-transfer.” Consider the abilities needed to excel in chess: strong visualization of the game board and perceptual understanding of where pieces could move and when. Despite demonstrating strong perceptual skills in chess, research found that chess players’ perceptual skills did not extend to other areas like visual memory for shapes (Waters et al, 2002). To summarize, beating all of your friends at chess doesn’t mean they won’t beat you later when it comes to a memory task. It does, however, mean you're really good at chess, which is pretty cool on its own.

Super Mario’s Super Memory?

Primary memory refers to attending to information that currently holds our focus of attention. Working memory refers to the ability to temporarily store information in primary memory while performing other tasks that divide attention. For example, a student is reading a math problem aloud and is asked to solve it. She keeps the problem in her primary memory as she works through it. Her primary memory knows the question is asking her how many apples are left, so while she’s doing the subtraction in her working memory, she doesn’t forget why she is subtracting in the first place.

Kuhn et al. (2014) conducted a study on whether playing in the 3D world of Super Mario 64 could have measurable benefits to the brain. They found that participants who played Super Mario 64 thirty minutes each day for a period of 2 months showed an increase in grey matter volume in the brain. Participants’ weekly ratings of their motivation to play the game correlated positively with the grey matter increase. The more motivated they were to play, the more grey matter increased. Grey matter volume increased in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an important area in executive control and working memory. The takeaway? You could make the argument that playing Super Mario 64 is your way of boosting your brain’s “muscle” power. Be wary though: these same brain changes were not found in response to playing Tetris (Haier, Karama, Leyba, & Jung, 2009). Different genres of games place different demands on cognitive processes and result in different brain activity.

They found that participants who played Super Mario 64 thirty minutes each day for a period of 2 months showed an increase in grey matter volume in the brain.

What About the Genre of Games like Apex and Call of Duty?

A study by Colzato et al. (2013) investigated the effect of First-Person Shooter (FPS) games on working memory in 52 healthy young adults. I’ll spare you the details and leave you with the takeaways. Overall, results showed video game players were more skilled in updating their working memory. They were better able to remove old non-relevant information from working memory and in so doing free capacity for new items. In other words, the study found that video game players have improved cognitive flexibility (Colzato et al., 2013).

Overall, results showed video game players were more skilled in updating their working memory.

As the informed consumers of research that we are, we can likely guess that it’s possible to find evidence out there with not so great results for video games. That said, it doesn’t hurt to know some of the interesting positive findings. If after a long day your favorite thing to do is unwind with a video game, who are we to judge your preferred brain boosting activities! At the end of the day, self-care is the important piece. Spend time doing whatever it is you’re motivated to do and look for the good in it.

References

Anderson, M. (2015). Technology device ownership: 2015. Pew Research Center.

Boot, W., Kramer, A., Simons, D., Fabiani, M., & Gratton G. (2009). The effects of video game playing on attention, memory, and executive control. Acta Psychologica, 129(3), 387-398.

Colzato, L. S., van den Wildenberg, W. P. M., Zmigrod, S., & Hommel, B. (2012). Action video gaming and cognitive control: Playing first person shooter games is associated with improvement in working memory but not action inhibition. Psychological Research, 77, 234–239. doi:10.1007/s00426-012-0415-2

Gobet, F., Johnston, S. J., Ferrufino, G., Johnston, M., Jones, M. B., Molyneux, A., & Weeden, L. (2014). "No level up!": no effects of video game specialization and expertise on cognitive performance. Frontiers In Psychology, 51337. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01337

Gopher, D., Weil, M., Siegel, D. (1989). Practice under changing priorities: An approach to the training of complex skills Acta Psychologica, 71(1-3), 147-177.

Haier, R. J., Karama, S., Leyba, L., & Jung, R. E. (2009). MRI assessment of cortical thickness and functional activity changes in adolescent girls following three months of practice on a visual-spatial task. BMC Research Notes, 2174. doi:10.1186/1756-0500-2-174

Jausovec, N. & Jausovec, K. (2012). Working memory training: Improving intelligence ― Changing brain activity. Brain And Cognition, 79(2), 96-106.

Kuhn, S., Gleich, T., Lorenz, R., Linderberger, U., & Gallinet, J. (2014). Playing Super Mario induces structural brain plasticity: gray matter changes resulting from training with a commercial video game. Molecular Psychiatry, 19(2), 265-271.

Lorant, S., & Lieury, A. (2014). Efficiency of brain training vs. recreational video games for cognitive/academic performance: A synthesis of 3 experiments. Journal Of Communications Research, 6(2), 107-151.

McDougall, S., & House, B. (2012). Brain training in older adults: Evidence of transfer to memory span performance and pseudo-Matthew effects. Aging Neuropsychology And Cognition, 19(1-2), 195-221.

Miller, D. J. & Robertson, D. P. (2009). Using a games-console in the primary classroom: Effects of 'Brain Training' programme on computation and self-esteem. British Journal of Educational Technology, 41, 2, 242-255.

Miller, D. J., & Robertson, D. P. (2011). Educational benefits of using game consoles in a primary classroom: A randomised controlled trial. British Journal Of Educational Technology, 42(5), 850-864. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2010.01114.x

Nouchi, R., Taki, Y., Takeuchi, H., Hashizume, H., Nozawa, T., Kambara, T., & Kawashima, R. (2013). Brain training game boosts executive functions, working memory and processing speed in the young adults: A randomized controlled trial. Plos ONE, 8(2), 1-13. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0055518

Olson, C. (2010). Children's motivations for video game play in the context of normal development. Review Of General Psychology, 14(2), 180-187.

Plerhoples T., Zak Y., Hernandez-Boussard, T,, & Lau J. (2011). Another use of the mobile device: warm-up for laparoscopic surgery. J Surg Res 170(2):185–188

Pereira, G., Ninaus, M., Prada, R., Wood, G., Neuper, C., & Paiva, A. (2015). Free your brain a working memory training game. Lecture Notes In Computer Science, 9221132-141.

Stroud, M., & Whitbourne, S. (2015). Casual video games as training tools for attentional processes in everyday life. Cyberpsychology Behavior And Social Networking, 18(11), 654-660.