What happened? How did you get to this point?
It’s likely more of a mind-over-matter thing. Often, it’s our mind that defeats us rather than our body. As much as we hate to admit it, our minds can do wonders. If we tell ourselves repeatedly, ‘Yes, we can do it, yes I can do ten more pushups,’ or ‘Yes, I can curb my sugar cravings,’ there’s a very high chance that we will be able to do it.
It’s a mental block that prevents you from doing more than you think you can. If you’re looking for a way to overcome this block, you may need to practice affirmations.
What Are Affirmations?
Affirmations have helped many people make significant changes in their lives and those around them. Do they work for everyone? Why do some people succeed in using this technique but still need to get something from it?
Affirmations are positive and direct statements that help an individual overcome self-sabotaging and negative thoughts. It helps people visualize and believe in their goals, dreams, and abilities. In other words, you are affirming and helping yourself make positive changes to your life goals.
Affirmations have the power to work because they can program a person’s mind into believing a concept. The mind is known not to know the difference between what is real and fantasy. That is why when you watch a movie, you tend to empathize with the characters on the screen even though you know it’s just a movie. But as soon as you leave the cinema, you are back in reality but can’t help feeling sorry or happy for the characters.
There are positive and negative affirmations, and some of these affirmations, such as being told you are smart when you were a child or being told that you are clumsy, can stick with us in both our conscious and unconscious minds.
According to Heinz Kohut, the pioneer of the psychology of the self, the fear of failure is often directly connected to a childhood fear of being emotionally or physically abandoned. When we face loss, we tend to over-calculate the risks we are taking and work out the worst possible scenario, which is usually the emotional equivalent of our parents or guardian deserting us. We imagine an entirely dreadful scenario in our minds, and we convince ourselves that trying to change isn’t good. Thus, it makes us lose out on opportunities for success. Then when we do fail (because our mind is already convinced we’ll fail anyway), the whole experience of affirmation that we give ourselves is that we are not cut out for success, or it is not in our karma to succeed, and then, we settle.
If a negative belief is firmly rooted in our subconscious mind, then it can override any positive affirmation even when we aren’t aware of it. This is one of the reasons why people do not believe in positive affirmations because it doesn’t seem to be working. Their negative patterns are so high it just knocks out the sun! So how do we add affirmations into our daily life, and how can we make them prevail above our negative thinking?
The Best Way to Practice Affirmations for Weight Loss
- Step 1- List all your negative qualities on a day you are alone and not busy or distracted (if you don’t have time like this, then make one). Include any criticism others have made of you and those you have been holding onto. Remember that we all have flaws, so do not judge. By acknowledging your mistakes, you can move forward, work on your flaws, and make a shift in your life. When you write these down, note whether you are holding any grudges along the way or holding on to them.
- Step 2- Use powerful statement words to beef up this assessment. Instead of saying ‘I am worthy,’ display ‘I am extremely cherished and remarkable.
- Step 3- Practice every day reading this affirmation loudly for five minutes at least three times a day in the morning, afternoon, and night before going to sleep. You can do this while shaving or putting your makeup on, when you are fixing yourself a cup of tea, or when you are in the shower. At best, look in the mirror so you look at yourself and repeat these positive statements. You can also write these affirmations in your notebook whenever you feel like it. Take note of how your writing changes over time. If we do not like something, often writing this down will use smaller handwriting, but if we write in big and bold lettering, we increase the affirmation. This is a mindfulness journey to get to the agenda of positive affirmation.
- Step 4- To enhance the impact, do body movements such as placing your hand on your heart when you feel uncomfortable writing out negative criticism of yourself in Step 1. As you work on reprogramming your mind, alter it from the concept of affirmation to a natural and definite personification of the quality you see.
- Step 5- Get a friend or a coach to repeat these affirmations. If you seek treatment at medical facilities such as https://westmedical.com/, you can get their support to practice these affirmations. For example, if they say you are cherished, remarkable, and disciplined, then connect this statement with your situation, such as ‘excellent training partner’ or ‘good mentoring.
Affirmations can be a potent tool that can help you change your state of mind, alleviate your mood, and, more importantly, ingrain the changes your desire into your life, whether it’s weight loss, completing a marathon, getting a promotion, and so on. But for all this to happen, you first need to identify the negatives and work on getting rid of them.