What are affirmations? Every thought that you think and every word that you say is an affirmation. Your words and thoughts are declarations of who you think you are as a person, and how you perceive the world around you to be. We make affirmations, both positive and negative, all the time without thinking about it. 

Why should I use affirmations? When negative thoughts and beliefs establish themselves as your core beliefs, they can cause you to have subconscious mental blocks about absolutely everything in your life. This, in turn, causes you to blame yourself for everything that does goes wrong in your life, which ultimately results in you self-sabotaging everything that you are attempting to accomplish. This cycle of negativity only ends up further affirming your negative beliefs. The greater your negative view, the harder it will be to overcome. However, the good news is that you can overcome them and develop a more positive mindset that will eventually help you attract and manifest everything you desire.

Why is it essential to adopt a positive mindset? What you attract into your life is highly dependent on what you think and talk about most of the time, as well as the beliefs that you hold in your mind. This means that being positive will attract more positive experiences and outcomes in your life, while negativity will attract more negative experiences. 

How do affirmations work? Just like negative affirmations have the power to brainwash you, so do positive affirmations. This is because your subconscious mind happily accepts anything that you feed it. Unlike the conscious mind, it is unable to question what you are telling it. The majority of the reactions you feel to certain situations are a result of affirmations that you have fed into your subconscious mind at one point or another. So, if you don’t believe that you are worthy of success and happiness, there will always be one thing or another that will show up and block your path to manifesting your greatest desires.

How do I incorporate affirmations into my daily routine? If you want your positive affirmations to be effective and work for you, then you need to repeat them on a regular basis, ideally at least once a day, because as bestselling author Gretchen Rubin once said, “What you do every day matters more than what you do every once in a while.” While listening to your positive affirmations on the SelfPause app daily is recommended, the timing of when you do them will depend on you and your specific needs. 

When determining what time to listen your positive affirmations, you want to ask yourself the following questions:

• What time of the day do you feel you need the most encouragement? In the mornings? After work?

• When do you typically need to de-stress or relax? Before getting on a phone call? After a challenging conversation?

• In what types of situations do you need to shift your mindset? While you are waiting in line at the bank? While sitting in traffic?

Once you’ve determined the best time during your day to listen to your positive affirmations, start incorporating your practice into your daily routine. You could listen while you are drinking your morning cup of coffee or tea, during your morning commute, before going to bed, or whenever you need a pick-me-up. Keeping your practice consistent will help you turn it into a habit that will ultimately impact your life and help you manifest all your heart’s desires.

How do I make affirmations work for me? Listening and reciting positive affirmations daily can help to unblock pathways so that you can start to attract more positive energy. While the process won’t be instantaneous, with time, you can completely shift your mindset and start manifesting your dreams and achieving your goals. 

There are a lot of ways that you can use affirmations, including listening to them on the SelfPause app, writing them down, saying them out loud, or having them around you. 

How do you create a custom affirmation? For your positive affirmations to be genuinely useful, you have to make sure that you are creating and using them correctly. Affirmations are incredibly personal, and no two goals will be exactly the same. This means that you need to sit down and take some time to think about the areas in the life that you want to improve. Then, start by picking just one area and work out what you need to do to bring about positive changes in your life, and use the following guideline to create your positive affirmations. 

• Start with the Words “I Am” – These two words, “I am” are the two most powerful words in the language. Since the subconscious mind can’t differentiate between reality and imagination, it takes any sentence that starts with these two words and interprets it as a command or a directive to do what it needs to make it happen. 

• Use the Present Tense – Again, because the subconscious mind is unable to distinguish between reality and imagination, framing your affirmation in the present tense as though you already have it, the subconscious will start to work on it to ensure that it becomes a reality. For example, rather than saying, “I am going to get a new red Camaro,” instead say, “I am enjoying driving my new red Camaro.”

• State What You Want, Not What You Don’t Want – You always want your affirmations to be stated in the positive. The subconscious mind isn’t able to hear the word “no,” so if your affirmation is “I don’t want to be fat,” all it hears is “I want to be fat.” You need to be sure to structure your affirmations so that they only express what you want to change and place your focus on the intended outcome. You should also avoid using the word “want” because it implies the lack, that you don’t have something, which can cause your affirmations to be ineffective. 

• Keep It Brief – You don’t want to create affirmations that are so long and complicated that you forget what you need to say. Keep them short and to the point. You want to think of your affirmations as a short advertising jingle that you can easily remember.

• Make it Specific – You want to make sure that your affirmations are as specific as possible. When affirmations are vague, they produce ambiguous results. For instance, rather than stating, “I am driving my new red sports car,” use “I am driving my new red Porsche 911.”

• Include an Action Word Ending with -ing – Including an action word ending with -ing adds power to the effect of your affirmation by evoking in your subconscious mind an image of you doing it right now. If your affirmation is, “I express myself openly and honestly,” you can add an action word ending with -ing to make it more powerful, like, “I am confidently expressing myself openly and honestly.”

• Include at Least One Dynamic Feeling or Emotion – You need to include the emotional state you would be feeling if you had already achieved what you desire. Some of the more common words you can add are joyful, enjoying, celebrating, proudly, happily, calmly, delighted, peacefully, enthusiastically, securely, lovingly, serenely, and triumphantly. Instead of making the statement, “I am maintaining my perfect body weight of 168 pounds,” you can phrase it as, “I am feeling agile and great at 168!” 

Make the Affirmations for Yourself and Not Others – When you construct your affirmations, you want to be sure that they are describing your behavior and not someone else’s. So rather than stating, “I am watching Steven clean up his room,” create your affirmation like, “I am effectively communicating my needs and desires to Steven.”