You’ve probably heard of positive affirmations and manifestations from some celebrity influencer or TikToker telling you how to start your mornings right every day at 6 AM. Affirmations refer to the practice of positive thinking and self-empowerment with the mentality that this will lead to greater amounts of success. So, I decided it was time to buy in and try to practice positive affirmations for an entire (business) week to see how it would affect my overall mood and health (minus the waking up at 6 AM part because one step at a time) and this is how it went!
Monday- So of course I forgot to do my affirmations when I woke up this morning but after a work-out, I decided to do some positive affirmations in the shower. I know myself and reading phrases off of my phone screen or a piece of paper isn’t really my style, so I found a podcast called Affirmation Pod (#nosponsorship) and I decided to listen to a “Starting Your Week” episode that basically talked through how to push past the anxiety of all the things I need to do during this week and find time for my personal health and wellbeing while also accomplishing the tasks I want to complete. I also listened to a “I love myself…” episode that listed a series of phrases including “I love my mind, my body and my spirit. I am special…I am alive. I am appreciating this very moment.” To be completely honest, I thought it was a little bit cheesy. But there was something nice about standing under the hot water and repeating these thoughts to myself that made me feel a little bit more at peace with myself.
Tuesday- Today was a “Wellness Day” at school which was their way of giving us small breaks without giving us Spring Break (RIP). So anyways I slept in until like 11 AM and only remembered that I needed to do my positive affirmations at 1 PM. I decided to wander over to YouTube for some inspiration and literally just searched “Positive Affirmations” and came across this video, which was a 10-minute guided meditation focused around morning positive affirmations. I enjoyed this one a lot – there was emphasis on trusting myself and my instincts and trusting that everything happens for a reason. In general, I think I’m a pretty realistically pessimistic person but it was nice to reassure myself that even though the events around me are sometimes out of my control, my corresponding actions are up to me. I think the main issue I am having with affirmations is struggling to truly believe and accept the things I am trying to speak into fruition but I do think that will come with time and I do believe the meditation aspect of this was very helpful to ground myself and start my day (at 1 PM) a little bit more smoothly.
Wednesday- Today, I woke up exhausted and just really mentally drained for no particular reason. I decided to watch another affirmation YouTube video but I wasn’t really feeling it at all. I have realized it definitely helps me more to say the affirmations out loud (even whispering them so my roommate can’t hear me) rather than just repeating in my mind but even then, the affirmations weren’t doing much for me today because I just kept thinking of everything I had to do during the day when I closed my eyes. I decided I should probably do a little more digging into why people do this and that leads us back to Youtube where I found Renee Amberg’s video on affirmations and the Law of Attraction and her tips and personal stories. Basically, her main points were to create personal affirmations that are the opposite of our negative thoughts and to use the 17 second rule which is basically repeating affirmations for 17 seconds to increase self-confidence and manifest these positive things into our lives.
Thursday- This was a really long day, so I ended up not remembering to do affirmations until I got in bed to go to sleep (oops). I used an app called ThinkUp which gave me lists of phrases/positive affirmations. This was actually maybe a nicer way to end the day to help me soothe into sleep more and feel better for ending the day.
Friday- My work shift started at 8 AM today, so I did some positive affirmations standing in the front of the bathroom mirror at about 7 AM to get myself ready for the workday. I told myself I would succeed at work and be confident in my abilities to perform my job well. This was nice to do just hype myself up while getting ready and was different because I personalized the sayings directly to me. In general though, I thought this was less soothing than the meditation method.
At the end of this week, I honestly don’t feel very different. I have learned that meditation might have been the most beneficial aspect of the experience. Although I think affirmations and manifestation make sense to the point of assuring ourselves with positive messages of self-confidence, I do not think it is as life-changing as social media might have led me to believe. I will probably try to implement affirmations into my daily life more in the form of journaling but I do not think the 17-second rule and repeating phrases to myself out loud are really my style.