The Importance of Positive Affirmations and Self-Care

How does your inner voice treat you? Do you find that your inner critic talks to you much more than your inner voice, which is supposed to uplift you? Especially if you do not meet your expectations. As a result, your inner critic causes you to be harder on yourself and discourages you from doing what you genuinely want to do in life because you are dealing with so much self-doubt and low self-esteem. Do you realize how powerful your words are? That is why, in honor of I AM Day, which is the second Sunday in March, which this year is on March 10th, you will want to start changing the dialogue about yourself if you are overly critical and begin to use positive affirmations. You will also want to understand the importance of setting time aside to do that.

What are Positive Affirmations?

The term “affirmation” derives from the Latin affirmare, which means to fortify or strengthen. Affirmations can be positive, but they can be damaging, which describes your inner critic. Whatever declaration you say to yourself, you will believe and manifest an outcome.

Therefore, if you repeatedly use negative affirmations, such as telling yourself that you are no good, as again, that comes from your inner critic, you will face a negative manifestation resulting from what you keep saying to yourself. You must use positive affirmations daily to begin believing in yourself, raising your self-esteem and confidence, and manifesting abundance.

Positive affirmations are statements that you say to yourself to fight negative thoughts and examples of those are “I am worthy,” “I deserve abundance,” and “I am good enough.” You want to ensure that whatever positive affirmation you use, you can believe it because if you feel you are lying to yourself, that will cause you to no longer use positive affirmations.

For example, if you are struggling with finances and want to change it for the better, you may have difficulty believing yourself if you use the affirmation “I am wealthy.” However, you can tell yourself, “I am attracting wealth.” or “I am attracting abundance,” because that is what you are doing. And once you see yourself in a better financial position, you can always begin to say, “I am wealthy,” as long as you believe it.

It is also essential not to use long sentences as affirmations as they are difficult to remember. You will want to make them short statements of four or five words maximum. Sometimes, a word or phrase can be an affirmation, such as “abundance” or “good health.”

As you believe your affirmations, you will act on them, leading to positive outcomes. You will want to say these affirmations several times daily to imprint them in your mind, making it easier to fight off that inner critic. And as soon as that inner critic attempts to take over, catch yourself and replace the negative thought with a positive affirmation.

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How Can You Establish and Use Positive Affirmations?

First, you need to look within and find something about your situation or yourself that you want to improve. Do you want to get into better health? Then, you will want to create an affirmation such as “I deserve good health.” Do you want to begin looking for a job that will treat you better? Then, you will want to use the affirmation, “My perfect job is waiting for me.” You get the idea.

You can also create several affirmations for several things in your life that you want to improve, but you don’t want to make too many either, as you can easily get distracted. Therefore, if you think about three things you want to change for the better, then create affirmations for those.

Once you have your affirmation in place, you should ensure that you surround yourself with it so you remind yourself to recite it several times a day. If you have one, write your affirmations on sticky notes and place them in different areas around your home or office. If you have a vision board, put your affirmation on that.

You can even create an mp3 of your affirmation to play in your car as you are driving or to play while you are doing chores at home. That will help the affirmations imprint into your mind. Aside from these affirmations helping you improve your inner dialogue, leading to positive outcomes, let’s discuss some of the benefits of reciting positive affirmations daily.

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Positive Affirmations Can Reduce Stress

One thing to understand is that stress is good for you because it keeps you motivated to improve. If you did not have any stress, you would not find it within you to have motivation, and you would not have a reason to find encouragement to make positive changes. However, the type of stress that is problematic is when it gets out of control to the point where you don’t manage it. It can be detrimental to your overall health, such as causing depression and cardiovascular ailments.

If you face many stressful situations simultaneously, you must find ways to manage them, or your overall health will suffer. Researchers found that using positive affirmations can help you manage stress, lowering your stress levels so it does not impact your health. Even one positive word you say to yourself daily can help you manage your stress levels. You can even use a reassuring affirmation such as “I am not alone in this.” that will propel you to delegate where you can, which alone will help alleviate stress.

You Can Beat Self-Sabotaging Beliefs

As mentioned, that inner critic in your mind can be your worst saboteur when you want to make positive changes. Still, that inner critic discourages you from making good changes, which causes you to have self-doubt and ruins your confidence, which causes you to revert to your old ways of preventing change. Your inner critic will say things such as “You don’t deserve anything good” or “You will never succeed at anything, so don’t even try.” That only causes you to become depressed, hopeless and demotivated.

And the more you allow those self-sabotaging beliefs to take over, the inner critic keeps getting louder. However, suppose you practice using positive affirmations daily. In that case, you will find that your inner critic quiets (it will fight you initially as you begin to use positive affirmations), and you will conquer self-sabotaging beliefs and behaviors. However, it will take time for you to develop a habit of using positive affirmations to silence that inner critic effectively.

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Positive Affirmations Can Help Improve Your Mental and Emotional Health

You can get into the habit of using positive affirmations daily. In that case, you will find that your mental and emotional health improves, which can also benefit your physical health, such as lowering blood pressure, helping you with blood sugar regulation, and managing your cortisol levels.

Researchers have found that positive affirmations can help with reducing anxiety that comes from overthinking, which often leads to catastrophizing, which is always thinking that the worst-case scenario outcome will happen. You will easily accept situations out of your control when you use positive affirmations. When you can control this issue, it will also help your physical health improve.

Additionally, using positive affirmations consistently will help improve your mood. If you have a low mood for a long time, then that can be a sign of depression. Suppose you do have a diagnosis of depression. In that case, you will need professional help for it, but using positive affirmations will also help enhance your mood and relieve you of depressive symptoms. There is a good chance your therapist would recommend that you find positive affirmations you can practice daily that feel right to you in between sessions.

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You Develop Positive Coping Mechanisms

It is tempting to find an easy way to distract and comfort yourself when facing challenges such as excessive shopping and eating. However, get into the habit of using positive affirmations. You will find that you won’t need to fall into those addictive habits, and you can cope with whatever situation you are facing much better.

It was previously mentioned that using positive affirmations can help reduce stress levels as you will learn to manage it. They also help you find better ways to cope with challenging circumstances as you develop the confidence to tackle what situations you have at hand, and you can also find methods to do some problem-solving. If you can say to yourself daily, “I can get through this,” then you will find that you can.

You see the importance of using daily positive affirmations, as you will find that your self-sabotaging behaviors stop as that inner critic quiets, and you can lower your stress levels, increase your self-esteem and confidence, and begin to manifest the things that you want to bring into your life. This year, I AM Day is on March 10th, so do yourself a service and use positive affirmations daily to change the dialogue in your mind and benefit from it. However, you don’t only want to use positive affirmations on that day. It would be best if you used it daily to reap the benefits. You deserve good things!