Time to Talk to Yourself

A sense of self can be grounding during almost any situation in life, be it good or bad. However threats to one's image in both societal and self acknowledgement can be detrimental to health, mental state, education and your ability to get through the day. Ever heard the saying “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”? This quote is credited to Einstein in the book “The rhythm of life: living every day with passion and purpose” by Matthew Kelly. (Although there is no evidence to support that he actually said it as It does not appear in the comprehensive collection of quotations “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein” from Princeton University Press.)

So what does this have to do with positive affirmations? Well let's ask ourselves something else first. How often do you find yourself festering on negativity that has been spoken to or about you? Often our perspective of ourselves are developed from what we have been told, a thought starts as "So-n-so thinks I'm a failure because I couldn't do this." That thought then becomes more thoughts like "I shouldn't try to do this because I failed the last time I tried." Leading to "Maybe I shouldn't try to do this because I failed at other things and people already think I'm not good enough."

Now here's the answer to the first question... YOU ARE A GENIUS! YOU ARE UNIQUE AND YOU ARE HERE TO CONTRIBUTE IN YOUR OWN WAY! Our uniqueness is needed to accomplish a purpose in this life. Your purpose may not be to become famous, create something that changes humanity's course in history or discover the undiscovered. It could be to raise a family, feed the poor or even to experience suffering in order to be able to prevent it. There are endless possibilities to what your purpose could be and giving yourself affirmations are great for positively changing your experience in life!

Here are 10 Positive Affirmations to tell yourself every day, preferably when you wake up. Saying them in front of a mirror tends to be more impactful as you can see and hear yourself. Pay attention to the way your body reacts to its own words rather than just hearing it and hoping you believe it. You'll more often than not crack a smile and that alone has a whole other shift on life that I could cover in its own right.

I AM

The power of acknowledging that you simply ARE is important. You are the only experience of life that you can say exists because you are your own experience. Think about how important and significant that is. You have your reality! I'm just a part of it and vice versa.

I LOVE MY BODY

That vessel you're currently gallivanting through life in is majorly important. Without it you wouldn't get ANY of the experiences you've had and will have. Not every experience is going to be good but those simply make the good ones better. If you start loving your body more, you'll also tend to want to improve on it and find it easier to do so. As someone who has been affected by scoliosis for many years, I started to get really depressed about it, until i turned my weakness into a reason to improve. I loved my body because it wasn't as strong or powerful as others but I had the unique chance to improve myself! I also accepted that I was the reason for allowing it to stay that way. Our bodies do change! So love it for where it's at now and you'll find it'll be easier to improve on!

I AM IN CONTROL OF MY THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS

If you're an over-thinker like myself, this one is going to really help you calm that mind! How often do you react on the first thought or emotion that appears, or fester more on that one thought or feeling? It's normal to have those thoughts and feelings because every body does. I once heard "It doesn't matter what your first thought is, what matters are the thoughts that you allow to follow." Society and culture have instilled thought patterns and behaviors in us, which means these are not necessarily our thoughts! That is why it is important to take a second and ask yourself if what you just thought or felt is what you really think. Using this affirmation gives you a preemptive strike on what you may think and feel during the day to come.

I WILL ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING I SET MY MIND TO

This affirmation and the next two work very well for believing in your capability to achieve what you set before yourself. Just because something doesn't go the way you expect it to, does not mean you're a failure. A true failure is stopping at a point of failure, it's a choice you make. You will accomplish anything you set your mind to when you take that failure as a learning opportunity and build on it to reach your end goal! You are capable and no-one gets to say otherwise until you've spent your entire life trying to do something and still haven't been able to. At that point I'd feel sorry for the poor guy who spent their time thinking you'd fail.

I AM DOING MY BEST

NO-ONE IS PERFECT! In fact the concept of perfection cannot exist without the presence of imperfection. It's wonderful to work towards your idea of being perfect but don't allow this drive to become a double edged sword that makes you feel like a failure because you weren't "perfect". Doing your best is the key and accepting that you are doing your best will help maintain that drive in order to reach your goal and the sense of success and accomplishment at the end of it.

I AM SUCCESSFUL

Bare with me on this, you can succeed in failing! Which means you are always successful in what you do as long as you don't stop at that failure. Success is the culmination of learning from failure, you are successful because you refuse to give up no matter what, you are successful because you have overcome a challenge. You are successful because you are failing to be a failure!

I AM ABOVE MY PROBLEMS

Look at a city or a forest from atop a mountain and what do you see, what do you hear and what do you feel? You see a view that will more often than not take your breath away and you'll hear a mix of sounds that create an ambiance and altogether leave you in awe. When you look at your problems at ground level, they're right in your face and coming from all angles. You feel overwhelmed and can't see the bigger picture but if you take a step back, look at where you are and place yourself on that mountain. You will find it easier to deal with your problems because you're not allowing them to get right up in your face.

I AM ENOUGH

We have been taught to heavily seek gratification and validation in today's world and this can definitely be seen on social media platforms and dating apps. Not receiving the desired outcome leads to trying to portray yourself in a way that isn't actually you. This can leave you feeling empty, unwanted, and confused about who you actually are, always pushing yourself to give and put out, in the hopes that someone will acknowledge you, then what? You're known for someone who isn't really you and that will take more energy to maintain than just being genuine. By telling yourself you are enough, you will begin to feel your own validation is enough and you'll portray more confidence in who you are and less neediness for what other people think which can surprisingly be easily portrayed and picked up online.

I AM MY ONLY LIMITATION

Who is to say what you can and cannot do? What you will or wont accomplish? Answer: Not a single soul other than yourself! You have been living your life since the moment it started which means you are the one who has the most evidence on whether or not something is within your capability. However, this is no reason to not give something a try. You'll never know until you give it a shot. By affirming that you are your only limitation, the realization that you're the only one stopping yourself from doing something pops up at every occasion. "Why can't I do this?", "Because I don't know anything about this." Hey you know what? There's an entire world wide web that more than likely contains more information on a subject of your interest than you will ever need. If not, you could be the one who discovers more about it simply because you didn't allow yourself to be limited by anything, not even yourself.

I CAN ONLY DO SO MUCH ABOUT SO MUCH

You're human as much as you are part of the divine, you can only change the things you can change! "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift and that is why it's called the present!"- Master Oogway. You can't change the past and you can't control the future, you have to take each day as it comes and make the most of it. You lost your job, time to find a new one or start your own business. World pandemic, rediscover the things you enjoy in life while staying in quarantine. Instead of wishing and hoping you could change the entire situation, because that is unrealistic, take a moment to look at what is within your power to change. Doing so will make the overall situation a lot less intimidating. If you keep trying to change what you can't you're just going to stress yourself out and get nowhere.

You may have read through some of these and thought, well you seem a bit negative in your reasoning for each affirmation. GOOD! BECAUSE I WANT YOU TO UNDERSTAND THAT THAT NEGATIVITY CAN EASILY BE PUSHED ASIDE BY AFFIRMING SOMETHING POSITIVE IN YOUR LIFE AND ABOUT YOURSELF! It's truly amazing the power that words hold over us and so shouldn't you owe it to yourself to be the only one with that much power over how you live your life?

You are the only one who knows what it is like to be alive in your universe and your destiny should not be left to others to decide. Be positive and do the things that make you happy, as long as they do not cause harm to others.