Something Good

I’m happy to report that Darling Husband Rob and I made it home from our Midwest adventure!  We had a wonderful time visiting with family, and meeting its newest member – our niece/goddaughter Ava Christine.  She is so adorable and such a good baby.  I give her parents a lot of credit for that, as they are so attentive and caring.  It was wonderful to watch.  I gathered several ideas for Something Good while on our trip, and I’ll be sharing them here during the next week or so.  (If nothing else, it’s a sneaky way to force you all to look at my vacation photos, right?)

In the meantime, I wanted to make a different suggestion for today.  It’s something I’ve long wanted to write about here, but I just saw a post over at Today Is That Day that reminded me of the topic.  Aaron Potts’ most recent post is called Self Improvement Task: Affirmations that Really Work.  He does a great job of explaining how to use affirmations to help create the life you want.  Some people believe that by just repeating your desires over and over again, they are simply going to manifest in your life.  I don’t really buy into that, and neither does he:

“You can't manifest a new house or a new car with affirmations. You can't bring forth a huge pile of money with affirmations. You can't conjure up a rewarding career, nor magically create a loving and loyal romantic interest.

Affirmations, do not do any of those things. In fact, affirmations don't "do" anything - not in the 3-dimensional world anyway. The job of an affirmation is not to conjure up the things that we want to have in our lives, but rather to conjure up the feeling that having those things will create in our lives.”

To be honest, when I hear the work “affirmation,” the first image that generally comes to mind is Stuart Smalley from Saturday Night Live in the early 90s.  He would look into a mirror and repeat, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!”  Unfortunately, you always got the sense that Stuart didn’t really believe the words he was saying.  He was the kind of character that you just wanted to feed.  Maybe that’s just me.  Whenever someone tugs at my heartstrings and makes me feel a little motherly, my first instinct is to make them a sandwich.  Also on that list are Perry Ferrell from the band Jane’s Addiction and Paul DiMeo from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.  But, I digress.

The point is that affirmations can seem kind of silly.  I used to teach a class about them when I worked at the hypnosis center; and at first, I felt like sort of a kook.  I decided that since I was extolling the virtues of these little personally-invented sound bites, I was going to go ahead and give them a try.  I was pretty shocked to discover that they actually worked for me!  They were kind of fun to create, too.  What follows is a great method of creating affirmations that can work for you, too.

1. In order to make my affirmations as powerful as possible, I started by creating a list of things I’ve done that I’ve enjoyed and/or been really good at.  What experiences have you walked away from where you felt really good about yourself?

2. I wrote words next to each item that described what is was that I enjoyed about that particular experience.  What I discovered was that certain words kept popping up.  For example, I realized that what I took away from several experiences was a sense of “satisfaction.”  That is the feeling that I get when I do something well, and by including it in my affirmation, I will help create that feeling within myself.  I will also be linking it to the new activity.  When you create your affirmations, try to include as many of these words as possible.  (As we mentioned when we talked about setting goals, keep your affirmations positive.  Create them around what you want, rather than what you don’t want.)

3. I wrote each affirmation out on an index card using colored pens.  There’s a theory that your brain will believe an affirmation even more strongly when it sees it written in your own handwriting.  I went ahead and embellished my cards with drawings to help create an even clearer picture of what I wanted.  In retrospect, I guess I was sort of creating a miniature vision board.

4. I kept the cards with me all day long and read them to myself as many times as possible.  Again, there is a theory that your brain will buy into it even more if you read them out loud so it can hear the wonderful thoughts in your own voice.  You don’t have to read them aloud every time, just try to throw in a few “dramatic readings” along with your silent ones.

I chose one affirmation to focus on for a week, rather than overwhelming myself with all of them at once.  As the second week rolled around, I still read the first affirmation occasionally throughout the day, but I focused more on the new one for that week.

My funniest affirmation-related success story:

Unfortunately, I’d never been the housekeeper I always longed to be.  I prefer to live in a clutter-free, dirt-free, (mold-free) environment; but it was always quite a personal struggle to get myself to do the actual cleaning.  So, I created an affirmation that read, “I enjoy cleaning and derive immense satisfaction from keeping a tidy home.”  I drew a picture of my house on it and surrounded it with happy little flowers and all that jazz.

For the next week, I repeated it to myself dozens of times a day.  By the end of the week, I wasn’t exactly convinced that I really enjoyed cleaning anymore than I had before the Great Affirmation Experiment.  What caught me by surprise was when I realized I was standing in my shower with a sponge in one hand and a cleaner in the other (this is before I switched to vinegar for cleaning) while repeating to myself, “I enjoy cleaning and derive immense satisfaction from keeping a tidy home.”  Maybe I hadn’t come to absolutely love cleaning in that week, but I had obviously motivated myself into doing it!

Today I’m suggesting that each of us come up with one affirmation that we’re willing to try on for the next week.  Definitely take a look at Self Improvement Task: Affirmations that Really Work in order to get some suggestions on how to focus your energy for the task.  A few more places to look for guidance:

• Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has a great post on how/why he believes affirmations work for him.  Plus, the title is funny:  Today I Will Improve Your Sex Life.

• An old post from The Occupational Adventure offers some suggestions for how to make your affirmations more powerful with Ten Tips for Effective Affirmations.    

• Some more suggestions on using affirmations from Christine Van Loo at Zaadz.