Seven steps to happiness part 7 – affirmations
Over the past six weeks, we’ve shared a number of ideas to help you escape negative thoughts, and instead find inner peace and happiness. Now it’s time for our final step – affirmations.
And Katie Phillips from Daring & Mighty begins her explanation of what affirmations are, and how they help you, with some of her favourite inspiring quotes.
Affirmations
“Every day in every way, I am getting better and better.” Dr Emile Coue.
Dr. Coue practiced medicine at the beginning of the last century. And as well as drugs, would prescribe his patients with this simple affirmation, with instructions to repeat it 20 times every morning and evening. He believed that the way we think affects our health, and felt that a combined mind and body approach was needed to cure illness.
“I know that I deserve love and I accept it now.” Louise Hay.
Louise Hay is, in my opinion, the godmother of affirmations and gratitude. She turned her life around and survived cancer by using these powerful tools, and has since helped to change many other people’s lives for the better too.
“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” Buddha.
Stressful, worrying and anxious thoughts mean our body is holding onto stress, worry and anxiety – all of which create disease. Note the meaning of that word. In old french, ‘des’ means reversal – so disease becomes the opposite of ease.
Why words are so powerful
The point of this action plan is to get us out of our head and into our body. To EASE our minds by feeling present in the now and connecting to what is real, resulting in health and happiness. Affirmations ensure that the thoughts and beliefs our mind is communicating to our bodies are healthy.
Research has suggested that affirmations have a bio chemical, neuro chemical and neuro pharmacological effect on the body – we can literally re-wire our brain to think differently. Isn’t that brilliant!
How to use affirmations
The key to affirmations is calm repetition. It’s a bit like positive self-brainwashing. Ideally you will repeat an affirmation in the present tense, as if you already have the thing you desire.
Your affirmation can be said out loud or silently – the key is to believe totally in what you’re saying, knowing that you are creating a new reality. It’s also crucial that you are calm and grounded when practicing your affirmations. A frenzied, desperate approach won’t work.
Louise Hay has some great meditations and visualisations around affirmations. She recommends that you surround yourself with your own unique affirmations – writing them on post-it notes and placing them on your mirror, computer screen and fridge door.
Or you can go one step further and have them made into a beautiful piece of artwork to hang on your wall. The walls of my own home are covered with Daring & Mighty Affirmation Art. The words have become deeply ingrained in my being, and I am certain that my mind has been re-wired by reading them and believing them every day.
To give you an idea of what kind of affirmations you may wish to create for yourself, here are a few of my own:
- I am love.
- I am worthy.
- I am safe.
- I trust myself and I trust others.
- I give and accept unconditional love.
- I have an open and warm heart.
- I live my truth.
- I am grounded, present and connected to the power of the universe.
- I am that I am.
- May the force be with you!
Find your own tools – and use them!
Over the past few weeks, I’ve shared lots of different tools to help you get out of your head and find inner peace and happiness. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading (and trying) them, as much as I have enjoyed sharing them with you.
We’re all different, and you may have found that some tools have worked better for you than others. Which ones particularly appealed to you? If you found that you really enjoyed practising one or two, and benefited from the results, that’s brilliant! Now it’s important to keep using them.
Remember the expression, ‘Practice makes perfect?’ Change doesn’t happen overnight, and persistence and determination are crucial while you are creating new habits to improve your life. So enjoy practising your new tools, and look forward to enjoying the rewards.
By Katie Phillips from Daring & Mighty.
