How to Write & Use Affirmations in a Non-Cringey Way
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ What affirmations are and why they are a powerful tool for our mindset
⋒ How I use affirmations in my life
⋒ Tips on how to write and use affirmations (without the cringe)
Today we are talking about how to write and use affirmations in a non-cringey way… because believe me, I used to think affirmations were weird and cringey so I get it, lol.
So, what are affirmations?
I consider affirmations a mindset hygiene tool. Affirmations are defined as positive statements that can help you challenge and overcome self-sabotaging and negative thoughts or beliefs. When you repeat them often and believe in them, you can start to make positive changes in your life. And I’m not just saying that because it sounds good – there is science behind the benefits of affirmations. Plus, I can speak from my own experience in using them, too.
When I started going to therapy back in like 2019 or 2020, my therapist recommended that I start using affirmations as a way to manage and cope with my anxiety. I truly thought she was losing her mind. To me, repeating positive statements to myself felt silly, awkward, cringey, pointless, etc.
But then my oh-so-patient therapist explained to me that when we use affirmations consistently, we can actually rewire our brains. Like excuse me, what??? 🤯
I used this analogy in the Best Year Ever Workshop in November, but in case you missed it, think about your brain as a grassy pasture. Now imagine someone walking back and forth along the same path of grass in the pasture. That part of the pasture becomes a natural path because of the grass being walked on over and over again. We create paths in a pasture by continually walking the same routes. Just like we create grooves in our brains by repeating the same thoughts and words.
What we repeatedly think is what we start to believe. It’s what our brains cling to as the truth.
Our thoughts create these loop patterns in our brains – so if you’re consistently repeating negative things, your loops become negative. Whereas if you’re consistently repeating positive things, your loops become positive.
I know it can be tempting to write this off because it seems too “out there” or even too simple to carry any weight, but I want you to think about how our bodies respond to physical exercise. When we workout, we do multiple reps of an exercise over time to change the composition of our bodies. It’s the same concept – just because you can’t physically see your brain, doesn’t mean that the change isn’t happening, you know?
Reps of affirmations over time reprogram our thought patterns which changes how we think and how we act. To me, hearing this analogy makes using affirmations make MORE sense.
Key 01 to Hustling Sanely is “Get Your Mindset Right” – and it’s the first key for a reason… it’s the most important thing you can do to establish a strong foundation for a peacefully productive life. You’ve heard me say this over and over again but our thoughts become our words, our words become our actions, and our actions make up our life. Your thoughts create the life you’re living… let that sink in.
Now, if you’re a skeptic like I once was, I want to give you some evidence to mull over:
One of the key psychological theories behind positive affirmations is something called self-affirmation theory.
The development of self-affirmation theory has led to neuroscientific research aimed at investigating whether we can see any changes in the brain when we self-affirm in positive ways. There is MRI evidence suggesting that certain neural pathways are increased when people practice self-affirmation tasks (Cascio et al., 2016). I’ll link an article here that has more info on Self-Affirmation Theory if you’re interested.
And for those of us who are bullet point people (hi, it’s me, I’m bullet point people) here are some ways that your life can be made better thanks to affirmations that are backed by science:
~ They lower stress and rumination (Koole et al., 1999; Wiesenfeld et al., 2001) (this is why my therapist suggested them for me)
~ They can increase your self-confidence and overall well-being]
~ They can improve academic performance
~ They can make someone more motivated to make changes in their behavior
Nothing “woo-woo” about any of that if you ask me!
How I Use Affirmations:
Listen, when I was a workaholic in the prime of my hustle culture days, I totally thought affirmations were a waste of time because I could use the time I spent affirming myself getting tasks done. Just saying that statement out loud pains me nowadays because I have lived and experienced how much sweeter life is here on the other side – I’m telling you – peaceful productivity is where it’s at. Plus, using affirmations takes hardly any time out of your day and the impact is very much worth it so yeah.
When it comes to using affirmations, consistency is the name of the game.
Think about the exercise analogy we used earlier – reps are what change your body composition when you’re working out and reps are what change your mental composition when you’re using affirmations. You’ve got to use affirmations almost daily if you want them to create change in your life.
That being said, the main way I go about using affirmations is by doing 2 things:
01: I have an affirmation app connected to my Apple Watch that sends me affirmations throughout the day. The app I use is called PepTalks and I like it because you can choose different categories to get affirmations for so like finances, confidence, encouragement for pursuing your goals, etc.
The only notifications that I have on my watch are phone calls, Libby, and this affirmations app – so any time I get a notification from the affirmation app, I pause what I’m doing, and either read the affirmation out loud or in my head if I’m somewhere where I can say it out loud.
I view this as like feeding my mind healthy snacks throughout the day, lol.
02: Writing an anchor affirmation every month, based on my goals or intentions for that month. I write this affirmation on a whiteboard that sits at my desk, in my planner, and in my journal.
Anytime I sit down at my desk, I read my monthly affirmation. And then I also read it every morning. In the Peacefully Productive Journal, there is a monthly prep spread and I keep one of the 2 ribbon bookmarks on that page and the other on the current daily page.
When I’m doing my morning routine, (and yes, I do it every morning, even on weekends) I open my journal first to the monthly prep spread and say my monthly affirmation out loud before flipping to the current daily page to start writing.
I personally like having this anchor affirmation that I say every day of the month because it helps keep me grounded with my Focus Goal for the month and it creates that repetition we talked about – I’m saying the same sentence or two every morning for 30 days. That gives it a chance to really sink into my subconscious, you know?
Tips to Remember When Writing & Using Affirmations:
01: Start by pinpointing what you want to change
When I write my monthly affirmation, I start by thinking about the area of my life that I want to create change in. This usually results in either pinpointing a struggle that I want to remedy OR a goal that I want to make progress in.
02: Focus on what you want
Once I know what I want to write an affirmation for, I shift my focus to what I want out of that area of my life. So step 1 is focusing on what is and step 2 is focusing on what you want.
03: Write your affirmation
I like to focus on step 2 when I write my affirmations – so with the focus on what I want. And then 3 other things I keep in mind when writing them are using the present tense, focusing on the positive, and writing it how I would say it out loud. I inject emotion that feels authentic to me. Don’t get hung up on flowery language – affirmations can be short and to the point!
Something extra that I do with my monthly anchor affirmations is adding scripture to the end of them – my faith is really important to me and adding this element to my affirmations aligns with my values and creates a deeper emotional connection with my affirmation.
I literally just type in Google “scripture about X” and read through different scriptures until I find one that I connect with
Now that you’ve written the affirmation you have to actually put it into practice – do this by saying it out loud every day and as you do that, visualizing the affirmation in action in your life.
So let’s do a quick example before we wrap things up because I know we love a good example around here:
Let’s say I’m doing my monthly check-in meeting and filling out the reflection questions in my journal and I realize that I said yes too much last month and I felt stretched too thin and put self-care on the backburner causing me to feel stressed out and not be an emotional asset to my family.
That’s step 1: recognizing what is.
So step 2: let’s think about where we want to be – focus on what we want.
I want to feel calm, I want to say yes only to things that align with my vision for this season, and I want to prioritize self-care so I can be the healthiest version of myself for my family.
So step 3 might sound like this:
I choose to focus my best time and energy on showing up for yesses that align with my vision and taking care of myself because my family and I deserve the healthiest version of me. // “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” ~ Matthew 11:28-30
See? Explicitly states what I want in a positive way and in the present tense! Then over the next month, I’d read that out loud every morning and imagine myself at peace because I’m self-caring (so like reading before bed, spending evenings outside with my family, going on morning walks) instead of saying yes to everything that’s asked of me.
So from now on, when you think about affirmations, think of them as mindset hygiene tools. Don’t overcomplicate them. They aren’t cringey or silly (although to be fair, you might feel silly when you first start saying them out loud – it’s okay, embrace it) they are you consistently speaking truth over your life!
Did you hear? 👀
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