Your Shortcut to Positive Affirmations

Positive Affirmations. Phrases or words people say to themselves to replace negative thoughts with positive ones. If you aren’t familiar with them they can be as simple as statements like: you are smart, you are enough, you are capable, and the list literally goes on forever. In short, get acquainted with them.

The idea behind positive affirmations is that the more we say them to ourselves the more we believe them. Is this true? Absolutely. But if you want to supercharge your positive affirmations, my advice is getting to the bottom of why you might not believe them to be true.

Me? The statement I leaned on for far too long and believed was that I was dumb. Yes, I know. But let me get you acquainted to where this came from exactly. An honour roll student, sports award winner, citizenship award winner, first to get my pen license in my class (of course I was). In all aspects I have always been an achiever. An A-type through and through who will put more pressure on myself than anyone ever could. And then one day during a co-ed volleyball practice before school started on a

cold winter morning (the details stuck because that’s how much it stung) the coach said to me in front of everyone on the team (context: I repeat - CO-ED, and I was one of the only 2 girls in grade 7 on a grade 7 and 8 team…..yep, exactly) “what are you dumb?”. And that was enough for me to hold onto that statement for dear life up well into my 30’s. Sigh.

So much so that any and every situation that had me potentially looking or sounding “dumb”, I shut down. Something else I vividly remember? Being in a class in first year university (you know, one I needed to get into because I had high grades - but I digress) and finding out 15% of our mark was going to be for participating in class. Raising our hand, asking questions or simply participating in discussion. What did I do? I immediately in my head gave up 15% of my mark. I literally never participated simply out of the fear of looking or sounding dumb. Now this isn’t a word I use or like - but do you know what is dumb - literally giving up 15% of your mark in a first year university class before ever writing an exam. Because I assure you, I could have used that 15% - but where was I.

We hold onto statements about ourselves that just simply aren’t true. In fact, we hold onto so many false statements even when we have SO MUCH evidence to prove otherwise. In my case I had decades worth of evidence proving otherwise, but I still chose to hang onto it. Which brings me to my very long and drawn out point of how we create a shortcut to positive affirmations sinking in and us believing them a lot quicker. Ready?

Try a positive affirmation on you need to hear. Maybe: I am beautiful, or I am capable….somewhere along the way you started to believe that statement to not be true. And I want you do undo it. Look for the evidence. Because it’s all around you. The best part about this approach is that you bring those bullsh*t false statements to the surface, call them out and let them go.

Your action for today? Try a positive affirmation on for size and work through it.

As always, thank you for choosing to be here.

Susan