Do Affirmations Work? Science Says Yes.

Affirmations are widely used within the law of attraction and manifestation practices along with motivational speaking and coaching as well. It is commonly associated with more spiritual practices, but affirmations can be used for anyone in any religion or spiritual practice. While telling yourself regularly how wonderful you are may seem unconventional, scientific and psychological evidence says affirmations do work. 

At the core, affirmations are more about training your brain to focus on the good rather than just a spiritual practice. Affirmations can also assist you in shifting your thinking and perspective from negative to positive, lack to abundance, from ungrateful to grateful, etc. So, let’s explore some of the science behind the use of affirmations in everyday life, how they genuinely work, and how you can implement them into your daily self-care practice.

The Psychology Behind Affirmations

The use of affirmations can go far behind a spiritual and self-help practice. When using affirmations, you can use the power of psychology to present mental shifts in your life. A standard theory that has been used as a psychological method to shift your mental state is called the self-affirmation theory. This theory is best conducted by utilizing your affirmations in a first-person tense to maintain a consistently positive view of yourself. When people hold a more positive personal view of themselves with the use of affirmations, this then allows them to shift their perspective of the world in a more positive light. 

The Neuroscience Behind Affirmations

Using affirmations as a part of your sense of self cannot only shift people’s state of mind but has been proven that it can cause dynamic brain shifts. A recent study conducted by the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology researched the correlation between self-affirmations and neuroscience. This study analyzed the relationship between positive and negative self-talk in correlation with the physical performance of athletes. 

In the findings, the study concluded that positive self-statements led to better performance than negative self-statements in 2 out of 3 physical tasks conducted by participants in the study. Additionally, the study’s social cognitive, and affective neuroscience areas discovered that participants who positively affirmed displayed increased activity in critical areas of the brain’s self-processing and valuation systems when reflecting on future-oriented core values. 

Implement Affirmations Into Your Daily Practice

Implementing affirmations and mantras into your daily practice can be easy to do. Here are three easy ways that I have best found to incorporate affirmations daily into my gratitude practices:

• Stay Consistent

  Consistency is always crucial to making any habit or mindset changes for the better. Affirmations and mantras require consistency. And if you are someone like me where it can be challenging to stay consistent, make it a point to automate it as a daily task. Utilize your email calendar, the calendar on your phone, or another reminder app to keep you on task. The task will turn into a habit that becomes a regular integrated part of your day. I utilize the task feature in my Gmail calendar and assign it to complete daily. Once the alert comes up on my device, I say my affirmations to myself.

• Combat Negative Thought Patterns

  Many people can often struggle with negative thought patterns. It can stem from your environment, how you were brought up, and even the people you spend the most time with throughout the day. If you find yourself surrounded by negative people, it can and will creep into your thoughts and make you approach things more negatively than optimistically. It doesn’t make those people necessarily bad people; they reinforce a lack and negative mindset more than a positive one. 

  If you struggle with negative thought patterns, affirmations will help combat that. Also, you can work to provide yourself with documented proof or evidence to show yourself that you are on the right path and can do hard things. Whether it’s looking back to your account summaries to prove to yourself, you are financially abundant and not broke or that you climbed a mountain when you thought you never could, the proof is right there. You did before and can do it again, so evidence tells those negative thoughts they have no superiority.

• Express Gratitude 

  Expressing gratitude should also be a daily practice if you want to succeed with affirmations. If you aren’t thankful for where you have been, how can you be excited about where you are going? More gratitude in life reinforces your affirmations and helps shift your mindset for the better. Sometimes you can even be thankful for this moment where you are reading this post to remind you that waking up each morning is always something to be grateful for. And while we’re at it, I am thankful you are here with me at this moment reading this post. So when focusing on using affirmations, say thank you to yourself for the time you took to affirm things to help your mind shift for the better.

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Affirmations are so much more than just a catchy way to tell yourself that you are fantastic and capable of great things. Affirmations have the power to shift your mood and completely shift your mindset and change your life as well. Be creative with them and fit them to make them attractive and easy to implement into your everyday life. Most of all, I would ensure you are consistent with them, provide evidence showing you that your negative thoughts have no merit, and express gratitude while watching the mindset shift happen! At the end of the day, there is psychological and scientific proof that affirmations do work.