Affirmations are on the menu this week. I have talked about affirmations ad nauseam through this blog but I found out that I really haven’t just set a blog post strictly to the topic of leaders using affirmations.
Affirmations are mentioned several times in posts talking about your belief systems. You can also use affirmations to influence your mindset. I also talked about how affirmations can be used for helping to achieve your goals for the year.
So it is time to dedicate a who post to nothing but affirmations and how they help you the up and coming leader.
Why Have Affirmations?
Affirmations have several benefits for leaders. From making sure they are in the proper mindset to helping them feel centered and grounded. Affirmations are able to reinforce beliefs and give you a more positive outlook on the day ahead.
Affirmations also place you in a state of gratitude. When your mind is in a more positive light, you are often more grateful for what life has put in front of you. You are more readily able to have an appreciation for those times when life doesn’t meet your expectations.
You bounce back from a negative mindset faster and with renewed vigor when applying positive affirmations. Affirmations though don’t keep all negative thoughts or bad experiences from your life. They do allow you to be more accepting of those negative experiences that don’t go according to plan.
The biggest reason for having affirmations is to help craft the mindset you want to have. Many people who are negative and grumpy all the time really don’t want to be in that negative feedback loop. I haven’t met many people who don’t like to smile at least from time to time. Affirmations help you change how you think of life. It shifts your frame of mind to be more pleasant and receptive to life’s experiences.
I am not a huge fan of the whole fake it till you make it mindset. Yet, There are times that it can help, and if you are facing your imposter syndrome head then adding the armor of a good affirmation can help you make that mindset shift. Leaders using affirmations believe they are capable of achieving their set objectives.
What are Affirmations?
Affirmations are positive statements that you tell yourself. Some people may call them mantras. Yet mantras seem to be closer to chants in my view and you don’t chant the affirmations. You state the affirmation in an affirming manner. That is how the word came to be. You are affirming your belief in the said statement.
Be positive
Affirmations are positive words. You can also have negative affirmations and those negative ones are often spoken when you are down on yourself. Often you are being your personal bully. The effects of those negative self-verbal abuses can be healed and reversed with the use of positive affirmations.
Told in the Now
Affirmations are Spoken in the present tense. How does Rafiki say it in the Lion King? “What does it matter it’s in the past?” In other words, you can’t change the past. You can learn from it, but you don’t get a do-over. So should on yourself does no good when citing affirmations each morning.
The future is still to come. You can look out and you can decide that you are going to get yourself into a position for success. Yet that is not when the change really happens. The change happens in the now.
You are dealing with today. Each day you wake up you are not in tomorrow, you wake up in today. Yesterday isn’t here either. You have to work in the confines of today.
You have to Believe it
That means you have to believe that affirmation. If you are saying something along the lines of I am a runner. If you don’t run at all, then there is a good chance that you don’t believe what you are saying. Believe what you are saying
If you are wanting to reach a place that you don’t believe. For instance say you want to have the affirmation, “I have a great body.” Yet you can’t stand to see yourself naked in the bathroom mirror. Then you need to scale back till you find a feature you like. It may be that you tell yourself that you have great eyes. Then when comfortable with that expand to add you have a great face. Keep building until you see that your body isn’t so bad. Yeah, it is a bit fluffy but has a good body as a whole.
Speak it as a fact
Saying your affirmations without conviction of facts doesn’t drive that belief home. If you believe that the affirmation is a fact it should be spoken with the confidence and authority of someone who knows what they are saying is true.
Doing so will get the attention of your subconscious mind and cause it to pay more attention to more than when you are beating yourself up.
How do you practice daily affirmations?
The smart butt in me wants to say you practice daily. That is true but in reality, there are several different ways you can practice your affirmations.
Say it personally.
You can read your affirmations aloud as part of your daily routine. You don’t have to look into a mirror as some would believe. Your mind hearing you say your affirmations is quite enough.
I often say my affirmations while setting out on the front porch in the morning. I see the school buses drive by and the parents shuttling the kids back and forth. It is a nice routine in my opinion.
Record your affirmations.
If you have a portable recorder then you can also record yourself reading your affirmations. There are plenty of apps that will record your voice on your phone. That way you can listen to your affirmations while you are driving to work.
Use an App.
There are apps like ThinkUP which for $5 you are able to record all of your affirmations in your voice and play them back. The app itself is free but you are limited to 5 affirmations. So you will want to cough up that 5 dollars.
Where to start
A great place to start is online. you can do a search for positive affirmations and Google does a pretty good job of bringing more than you could possibly want.
Just a quick preliminary search I found Prolific living and their 100 Affirmations. They have quite a few good ones. They are also broken up into sections so if you are feeling insignificant there are about 5 different affirmations you can use and then there are several more.
Then Make a Vision Board has a nice list of 100 affirmations too. There are plenty of places you can find online. But also when you are reading and you find a saying that you like and it “Rings” true to you and your being. Write it down see how it feels in the morning as you read your other affirmations. That is how I often find many of my affirmations.
It doesn’t matter how many you have you can start with one if that is your prerogative. You can start with maybe this one.
I am worthy of the success that is coming my way
Personal Affirmation
That is all you need to start. Just one Say it each morning as you are waking up and drinking your coffee. Say it in a confident voice, and you are starting off a better leader because you are making changes.
What is your favorite affirmation? Tell us in the comment section below.
[…] Bryan Goodwin wrote in Affirmations for Better Leadership, saying affirmations with confidence awakens the […]
My favorite affirmation is
I alway have enough money for everything I truly want.