How to Use Affirmations in Six Easy Step — everything you need to know to get started!
Wondering how to use Affirmations? Here are six easy steps to create an empowering Affirmation practice!
When I first began using affirmations, I was a bit confused about what to do and when to do it.
Over time, I realized that this was something I was over-complicating!!
The most important point: go with what works for you!!
I provide these easy six steps to help you use affirmations to create transformation in your life!
First Step: Choose
Choose an Affirmation which resonates with you and your sense of personal truth and desire for transformation.
Refine until each word reflects personal truth.
- Express the new belief, direction or path as an affirmation with an I-Statement.
- Write it down. Say it out loud.
- Observe the feeling within.
- Does it feel truthful?
- Is this the direction to move toward now?
Remember that the right Affirmation resonates with your inner sense of truth.
The best Affirmation feels right, feels uplifting, offers encouragement, and helps ground and balance.
Second Step: Repeat
Repeat the Affirmation over and over all day, out loud when possible.
- Repeat five or six times upon waking in the morning and five or six times before going to sleep.
- Repeat while brushing teeth or waiting for email to load.
- Repeat while driving to work or on errands.
- Repeat while fixing your lunch.
Try to keep the Affirmation in mind throughout the day, allowing it roll around in both heart and head as much as daily activities permit.
Pay attention to this experience, noticing what moves or releases.
An Affirmation practice brings forward new possibility and choice because life is being seen and experienced in new ways.
An Affirmation might also bring forward another aspect of negative self-belief to release.
Don’t see this as failure! Instead, know that your Affirmation is working.
If you make note of what negativity or resistance arises, you now have what you need for choosing your next Affirmation.
Third Step: Remind
Use visual cues as prompts and reminders.
Write your Affirmation down and display in places where it can be easily and frequently seen: the wall beside a bed, the mirror in the bathroom, the front of a refrigerator, the dashboard of a car, above a computer screen.
Perhaps open display is not feasible, that’s ok.
Create cards to carry. Wear reminders like a bracelet, a ring, or a rubber band.
Place reminders around which symbolize the Affirmation: a gemstone, a picture, or a vase of flowers.
Fourth Step: Counter
Use your Affirmation to counter discouraging or negative thoughts.
At the beginning of an Affirmation practice, the critical voice will begin a counter-attack, throwing up challenges to the truth of the Affirmation.
Whenever these negative thoughts appear, repeat the Affirmation.
By countering each old thought with the new idea of the Affirmation, old beliefs will begin to weaken and lose hold.
The constant focus on the Affirmation will help release feelings and thoughts which no longer fit with the ideas and intent of the Affirmation.
Saying an Affirmation in response to negative thoughts begins to counter the negative habit and, over time, will help release this negativity and replace it with supportive ideas and beliefs.
Fifth Step: Adjust
With growth and learning, adjust the Affirmation to reflect new awareness.
In the beginning, something may not feel quite right about an Affirmation because the Affirmation is touching upon something within which resists change and the new belief.
Or over time, a steady practice with an Affirmation begins to loosen layers which will then begin to appear in awareness.
These layers hold old habits and beliefs which no longer serve.
In either case, adjustments help support smaller steps towards the complete idea.
For example, if the Affirmation is “I am a generous person” and the word generous just doesn’t feel right, here’s a learning opportunity.
Reflect on why generous doesn’t resonate or feels out of sync.
Is generosity not possible? Is the thought of generosity overwhelming?
Modify the Affirmation to make it initially easier to work with and possible to move toward the stronger statement after several days.
Shift the positive Affirmation to “I am learning that I am generous person.”
If that doesn’t help, begin with a No phrase such as “I am no longer not a generous person.”
With several days of reflection and the use of a modified Affirmation, most likely the new direction can be claimed without hesitation, “I am a generous person.”
Sixth Step: Commit
Commit to an Affirmation for 30 days.
Working with an Affirmation helps anchor the new belief in the field of habit.
While 7 to 14 days may be all that is needed, committing to the 30-day time frame allows the opportunity for new layers of understanding from deeper down to come to the surface.
Balance digs in deep revealing more levels of healing and balance.
In the beginning, it’s possible to believe with certainty exactly why an Affirmation will be helpful.
However, a 30-day daily practice will allow additional and unanticipated knowing and learning to surface, bringing new awareness and news gifts for thought, consideration, and learning.
In fact, as one Affirmation loosens the hold of the critical voice, additional negative beliefs may make themselves known, presenting additional opportunities for new Affirmations.
Take any emerging negative belief and create a new Affirmation to allow the old habit to die and the new learning to take its place.
Remember, it is possible to work with more than one Affirmation at a time.
However, learn your limits.
Sometimes two Affirmations at a time is too much and sometimes three is not enough.
Knowing how to use Affirmation in these six easy steps is the way to begin an Affirmation practice.
To dive deeper into the spiritual practice of affirmations, begin here: What is an Affirmation?
