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