Are You Ready To Stop The Self-Sabotaging Thoughts?

Let's change the narrative with positive affirmations👏🙌

👉 What Are Affirmations? 🧐

In the simplest form, self-affirmations are statements. Your affirmations can be positive or negative statements and they are believed to lead to a corresponding outcome 🔄.

Self-affirmations affirm one’s self-worth. It causes you to reflect on your core values which can help you to gain a broader view of self. This results in you progressing beyond specific threats to self-competence or self-integrity✅ (Steele, 1988; Cohen and Sherman, 2014).

👆 There are different forms of self-affirmations... ✨ Speaking a self-affirmation ✨ Writing a self-affirmation down ✨ Goal affirmations (these are focused on the present progressive tense - as if your affirmation is already occurring and will continue to occur) ✨ Mantra affirmations (these are focused on the present tense, these are as if the affirmation is already true)

👉 Neuroscience and Affirmations 🧠

Let’s explore the underlying mechanisms of how affirmations can work … A study exploring the brain systems activated by self-affirmation (Cascio et al. 2016) has reported participants who practiced self-affirmations demonstrated increased activity in their posterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex (these are regions involved in the brain self-processing) and their ventral medial prefrontal cortex and ventral striatum (these are regions involved in the brain valuation systems when reflecting on future core values). The study's results suggest that positive self-affirmations can have strong effects on the reward system in conjunction with future orientation.

👉 How Can Practicing Affirmations Help you?

✅ It can help to challenge your self-sabotaging thoughts and replace them with positive ones. ✅ It can help to improve your mood and relieve symptoms of anxiety and depression. ✅ They can help you align yourself with your authentic self, goals, and intentions. ✅ It can help you to recogninse the self-deprecating thoughts you have allowing you to change them. ✅ It can help promote positive behaviours and life changes. ✅ It can help you to acknowledge your power. ✅ Self-affirmations have been reported to be successful due to their ability to broaden an individual's overall perspective and reduce the impact of negative emotions (Sherman, 2013 and Cohen and Sherman 2014) ✅ Research has also shown that self-affirmations remind the individual's psychosocial resources that extend beyond a threat. This results in the individual having the ability to focus on their sources of positive self-worth that transcends the threat. This is proposed to reduce an individual's reactivity to the threat and protect their overall psychological well-being (Koole et al 1999, Cohen et al 2012, Sherman et al 2013).

✍️ Key Points to Remember...

The positive effects of practicing self-affirmations often occur without explicit awareness (Sherman et al., 2009). The issue with this is that you may find yourself practicing self-affirmations and feeling as if you are not gaining anything, this can lead to you giving up. But, it is important to remember that the positive effects ARE occurring, it is just you may not be explicitly aware of this. So, don’t give up!

Remember you need to commit to yourself. You need to set aside time each day to dedicate to your self-affirmation practice. Remind yourself that self-affirmations are self-care, and you deserve to practice self-care. It can help to perceive your self-affirmation as the same as brushing your teeth, a habit/behaviour you need to do each day.

✍️ How Can Happio Help You?

🎉We are excited to announce that we are launching an affirmation series coming soon to our resources section!🎉

🤗 You are not alone, Happio is here to help 🤗 Let me know any affirmations you like to use in the comments...