The impact of positive affirmations
Oftentimes, when we feel the lowest of lows, our brain will constantly feed us biased information of how it perceives us based on our situations. Feeling awful about yourself after you’ve failed a test or believing you are a bad person when you make a wrong choice, even when it feels like the worst thing, is not actually true most of the time.
I’ve learned throughout the course of my life that the things you tell yourself matter a lot more than you think they do. And you might think –of course– that’s an obvious fact of life. But the truth is, what you say to yourself subconsciously and the thoughts you may not even choose to tell yourself have an enormous impact on your mental health.
Knowing this is one thing, but actually executing it is another. A couple years ago, when I was stuck in an anxiety-ridden mental state and felt down all of the time, I asked myself: why am I feeling like this, and how do I get out of this loophole? Very long story short, you come to realize over time that if you are constantly feeding your brain negative thoughts that those thoughts will compound and recycle into how you view your surroundings.
It is so important to figure out that what you tell yourself is what you will start believing. Giving yourself compliments, being gentle with yourself, and maintaining a good attitude in the face of hardships are essential parts of shifting your mindset. But that is easier said than done.
My biggest tips would be to firstly take a step back and, from an outside perspective, look at how you are treating yourself. Secondly, if you decide you don’t like the view, tell yourself that you are going to try to talk to yourself how you would talk to a friend for just one day. The single day part is very important because setting a long term goal of always being kind to yourself and completely flipping your mindset is practically impossible, and will leave you feeling dejected. Throughout that day, make sure to catch yourself or make a mental note of any time you feel yourself being negative, because that will give you a gauge of how much work you need to do.
While that seems easy enough, as I went through this journey, I felt a little ridiculous as one might, because it’s hard to believe those overly positive phrases that you are now repeating when weeks before you were telling yourself the complete opposite. Selecting uplifting mantras that are more neutral would be the third piece of advice I’d give because they are more believable, and it helps grow your confidence when starting from scratch.
Overall, once you start repeating these affirmations daily, you will see a dramatic shift in your mindset. No, it will not happen overnight, and no, not all days will be good ones where you feel completely confident all of the time. But I can promise you that attempting to speak more positively is at least a step in the right direction, and once you start, you will notice that that self-talk will build day by day into a foundation more sturdy than any negative, unfulfilling lifestyle. It took me a long time to realize that if those negative thoughts can have so much power over your mind and influence every aspect of life, why can’t the positive ones have that same effect?
—Sophie Abitz
