Writing down affirmations is another fantastic and popular journaling method, especially for ambitious women. Tchiki Davis, an expert on well-being technology, claims that “affirmations are statements that we say to ourselves that can shift our minds in ways that can make us feel better about ourselves and our lives.”
When we write down affirmations, we’re emotionally supporting ourselves and doing internal work to both help us reach our goals and appreciate where we’re at in the present.
Specifically, affirmations also help us with:
Negative Thoughts
Limiting Beliefs
Change
Attracting Abundance
Optimism
Manifesting
High-Vibrational Energy
Self-Love
Self-Esteem
Basically, writing down affirmations is a wonderful tool for self-empowerment. They’re short and simple sentences that can be impactful for anyone, but particularly for ambitious women who want to work on themselves as they pursue their goals and dreams. Affirmations can help us cultivate a positive mindset, develop a new belief system, and rewrite negative stories that do not serve us.
For example, if you’re struggling with confidence, you might consider writing down an affirmation like, “I am a confident and capable woman because I can figure things out.” If you’re anything like me, writing out sentences like this is SUPER uncomfortable— so much so that your inner critic might hiss-whisper, This is extremely lame of you.
However, when we write out affirmations like this, we’re doing crucial un-conditioning work to rid ourselves of negative thoughts. As Jen Sincero says in her book, You are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, “Our thoughts become our words, our words become our beliefs, our beliefs become our actions, our actions become our habits, and our habits become our realities.” Our thoughts are unbelievably powerful, and honestly, they’re running the show.
So, when we take the time to write down affirmations, we’re doing the intentional work to rewire our brains with more empowering, positive thoughts that can prompt us to take action toward our goals and dreams. As is the case with all types of journaling, there’s no right or wrong way to write down an affirmation... but, I’ve found that they’re most effective if they’re honest.
In other words, it’s not enough to just write down a positive sentence about our capabilities, bodies, or dreams. No, we’ve got to believe what we write down.
Here are some concrete strategies we can use to believe our affirmations:
1. We can honor the process by respecting the transient nature of where we’re at right now, rather than just focusing on the outcome.
For instance, maybe you don’t actually believe that you’re a confident and capable woman, so you write down: “I am open to believing that I am a confident and capable woman.” By phrasing the affirmation that way, it suggests that we will work on making this statement an authentic belief.
2. We can pair our affirmations with intentions.
For example, you may write, “To be a confident and capable woman, I intend to show up with authentic energy.” By stating the goal (affirmation) with the type of energy it will take (intention), we can work on embodying the type of person we need to be to live out that desired affirmation.
3. We can look for evidence in our lives that confirms our affirmations.
Start by writing down, “I am open to believing that I am a confident and capable woman.” Then, directly underneath that sentence, make a list of moments from your life that confirm the belief you want to have about yourself. For instance, you could flip through your memories to find times that you did feel confident or capable, and then list those moments underneath the affirmation. If there’s no evidence, you then must make the evidence through taking small actions to confirm the affirmation. Think of it as a challenge to become who you say you want to be.
Through using a combination of the three strategies above, we can become more intentional about our thinking and how we show up to our life and goals.
At the end of the day, affirmations are a wonderful too for self-empowerment.
XOXO
Meggy
P.S: If you want to see how I used affirmations during a TOUGH hike to empower myself, listen to this episode of The Power Within Her Podcast.