Daily Affirmations Don’t Work
But can it?
I said daily affirmations to myself for 30 days and at the end of it, I felt nothing.
Here’s what happened:
I started following WetheUrban on Instagram back in May 2020 after seeing their colorful daily affirmations. They were like a good one-liner comic strip on the back of a newspaper. You laugh, enjoy yourself for a moment, and then move on. That is how I treated daily affirmations.
Until 2021
I knew these were just words but I also knew that you could be driven by reshaping your mindset by really living by phrases such as:
1. Every obstacle is an opportunity to grow
2. Who you are is not for others to decide
3. Progress over perfection
And I wanted to feel something.
I realized going into this that
1: I have a hard time processing things
By things I mean both internal about myself and my strengths as well as big life changes. I remember not really processing that I got into UC Berkeley until I finished my first week there.
There is no WOW part for me. It is a process of me physically beginning my transition until I’m there and then it might just dawn on me that my life has drastically changed and I think to myself, “oh lord.”
2. I can’t look at myself and believe it
One of my longest-running affirmations is affirming my body image. It has taken me years to get to a place to say that I am beautiful, and even then not every day or every week do I look in the mirror, say that, and feel like it is true. When you are practicing to not be fueled by others' opinions on you to reinforce how you feel about yourself, it is much harder to get to a place of self-love.
So with that in mind, I started with up to three affirmations:
1. I am brave, confident, and strong.
2. I am capable.
3. I am resilient.
I would turn and face myself in my full body mirror and say an iteration of those three affirmations the first thing in the morning.
Nothing really changed after that.
There were times where when I was doing a difficult workout or setting a new PR (personal record), that I would speak one of these three back to existence, and then we would get through it. And I believed it then.
30 days later, I felt no more confident or beautiful than when I started. But here is what I did notice:
Why did it take for a physical action to believe something mental?
A mind-body connection
I think I am more Nietzsche than I give myself credit for. When it comes to feeling confident about myself physically or improving physical strength. My mind-body connection in the past year has improved significantly due to my pull-up challenge. I said I had the strength to push through and I dug deep and I completed it.
Believing however that I am qualified or worth it or beautiful is such a mental practice to break through. And I realized if I am not fully committed to what i believe in, then I won’t believe that affirmation.
So perhaps that is what I need to do: find how to shift my mind to commit to it (why am I saying what I am saying) and how that will transition to believing in it.
I want what I say to have meaning. I am tired of believing in empty words that have so much potential to lead me to unexpected opportunities.
