Affirmation

Where do you get your affirmation?

Most of my life I looked for affirmation from others. I needed to hear their words of praise, encouragement, love… I NEEDED it. I would receive compliments or praise and I would feel an ever so brief fluttering of pride. Then I would start feeling they didn’t really mean it or I didn’t really deserve it or they’re just trying to be nice, etc.

At the time, it was like food. My body gets hungry and I need to eat. I eat and feel better but then several hours later, I need to eat again.  If I don’t eat, I get sick. For me, affirmation was food to my spirit. It was an endless cycle of need. In order to feel good I needed to get that affirmation. In order to get that affirmation, I needed to make sure you were happy and your life was good. In order to do this, I needed to do whatever you needed me to do (whether you asked or didn’t) so you could be happy. However, most of the time whatever I did would not make you happy and I was left feeling deflated, so I would start again. UGH what a cycle!

I didn’t and couldn’t believe anything good about myself. Even when someone spoke wonderful words of affirmations to and about me, I couldn’t believe it.  I was stuck; stuck in the negative belief system I had built and stored in my subconscious mind. In order to move from the negative subconscious thought patterns I held to, I had to begin practicing conscious thought patterns to retrain my mind.

Affirmations make you conscious of your thoughts. To affirm means to say something positively. It means to declare firmly and assert something to be true. Affirmations are statements where you assert that what you want to be true is true. ~ Boulder Coaching Academy

In order for me to start believing what others said about me, I had to start saying and believing these things myself. As I began to say these things to myself, I slowly started to change my thinking and my beliefs of myself. Each time I would receive a compliment or positive affirmation, I wrote it down and posted it on a mirror where I could see it every day. I looked at them, read them, and said them out loud and each time it got easier. I did not counter it with a negative comment i.e., “I am pretty…yeah right but my teeth are crooked.” I just stated:

• I am pretty.
• I am smart.
• I am funny.
• I am fun.
• I am kind.
• I am caring.
• I am loving.
• I am giving.
• I am helpful.
• I am sweet.
• I am happy.
• I am blessed.
• I am thoughtful.
• I am wonderful.
• I am amazing.
• I am creative.

It has taken awhile to get here but I truly believe these things about myself today and don’t really care if someone else doesn’t think these things about me. It’s okay. I don’t need to go looking for anyone else to affirm who I am. I also don’t have the need to have others think these things about me.

Today I know!