Like me, many people use affirmations for personal development and to help them meet their life goals. But did you know you can use affirmations to build resilience and combat stress? What?  I wish they would have taught AFFIRMATIONS in school. 

If you have an ongoing stressful issue, you can create the right affirmations to support you. Affirmations will help you deal better with current stress, and over time, prevent future anxiety. Here are a few examples that might help you in the future. 

Know Your Negative Enemy

Identifying your negative thoughts is the first step in working out the best affirmations for you and your situation. 

Take a moment to think of all the beliefs that come up when you think about your stressful event. Do you worry about not knowing what to say when the school calls you about something your child did or freezing while asking a question on Zoom with your employer? Write down every negative thought that pops into your head. Make the conscious decision to move away from those negative beliefs. 

I call this negative energy, and you are thinking about the bad before it even happens! Stop that. When you know something negative will come up in conversation, don't run away; use your affirmation that you are AMAZING, and things happen. Don't sit there dwelling on it either.  That is my problem. I will over-analyze things, so now I positively analyze things. 

Turn the Negatives into Positives

Now you have your list of negative thoughts; you can take each one and turn it into a positive. Make strong positive statements and remind yourself of times in the past when you coped well in similar situations. 

When you develop your affirmations, tie them back to times when you have succeeded in the past. If you can't think of any, ask your partner, friend, or colleague to help you. Likely they'll have a much more positive view of your skills and achievements than you do! Why is it so hard for us to think of positive things about ourselves? 

Write down some encouraging phrases to get you through, like 'I'm feeling stressed, but I will be ok,' 'I can do this,' 'When this is over, I will be so proud of myself.' I put my affirmations up on my corkboard when I need encouragement. 

Keep Your Affirmations Realistic

Affirmations are not magic. They are not the magic wand you want. Keep your affirmations in proportion to what you can do and how you feel. If they are too ambitious, they can make you feel more anxious than before.  And if you have a misstep or you fail, then you'll feel even worse than before. 

Your affirmations will help you even more if you know you have done everything possible to be prepared. Anticipate what might go wrong and work out strategies to prevent or deal with it, from having spare notes if the technology fails to have a glass of water nearby if you feel faint while speaking in front of a lot of people.  

Affirmations are statements that are used and repeated to encourage and uplift the person speaking them.  

1) Don’t use past or future tenses. 

2) Positive affirmations only include positive words.

3) Speak confidently, as if your positive affirmation were true – a hard, solid fact.

Practice some of these daily affirmations and watch how they transform your everyday experiences.