How are you feeling about yourself right now? Good, bad, indifferent?
Do you know your feelings about yourself come from your thoughts about yourself?
Quite simply, if you hold onto good thoughts about yourself then you’ll hold onto good feelings about yourself. But if you hold onto bad thoughts about yourself then you’ll hold onto bad feelings about yourself.
Our thoughts have power. We can hurt ourselves or help ourselves with our thoughts!
If you don’t have good thoughts about yourself even on a few issues it’s likely you have bad feelings about yourself and/or you have bad feelings about the people around you.
You can start changing the way you feel by changing your thoughts!
One simple way to start feeling better about yourself and experience more success is to say positive things about yourself out loud a couple times a day. The positive things you say about yourself are called affirmations.
Affirmations can help you make significant changes
Occasionally when I bring up the idea of affirmations to a client they’ll resist. Saying positive stuff about yourself seems silly. It also seems like too simple a task to make any significant changes in how someone feels about themselves.
When I ask what thoughts clients are currently thinking about themselves they easily answer with a list of negative comments. Interestingly, it’s as if they are unaware that the negative things they think about themselves are the same as criticisms.
Sometimes people have been criticizing themselves for so long that it’s become automatic. They aren’t even aware of the critical thoughts – all they are aware of is the empty and bad feelings.
Being self-critical is a common issue to most people, so it’s likely that you have been using criticisms on some area of yourself, and the criticisms are working great…to keep you deflated and defeated!
Flip Criticisms Around
So, if criticisms are powerful enough to keep you down…let’s grab onto that negative energy and flip it around! Let’s use the same energetic power of our words and speak out positive affirmations so we encourage and motivate ourselves! Start feeling better now!
You can download the free affirmations I’ve written (just fill in the form at the top of this page) and say them aloud twice a day or you can write your own affirmations. The idea is to speak out loud positive statements about yourself that are already true or that you’d like to be true. By speaking out loud what you want to be true you are giving yourself a vision of the future and setting goals into motion.
Set yourself up for success with affirmations
I know using affirmations is going to feel awkward and maybe a little bit foolish at first but in my experience they work!
Start telling yourself positive affirming things like:
“I am capable of anything I set my mind to.”
“I am smart I can figure things out.”
“Everyday I take action to achieve my goals.”
You can say just a few affirmations for a while and then move on to a few more or read the whole list morning and night.
Begin your day by saying self-affirming statements aloud and you’ll find that you’ll catch yourself when you start to be self-critical. You’ll find by holding on to good thoughts about yourself you’ll feel better and experience more success.
Stop Criticizing-Start Affirming Yourself!
Remember to Keep It Simple, Sweetie!
All the best,
Alice