30 affirmations I say out loud
It’s these ones I write out and recite the most
Hello! This is Leyla from A Day Well Spent, a newsletter seeking pathways to more purposeful living.
Here’s what landed in subscriber inboxes the past couple of weeks:
An interview with the deeply enigmatic Snow Raven, a mystic and musician hailing from one of the most remote and frigid regions on the planet
Showing our appreciation for the small (silly or frivolous) things we have been grateful for this year — I have thoroughly enjoyed the responses to this!
A practical guide on how to very easily grow mushrooms at home - no outside space needed
Asking ourselves ‘what do I want to invite in?’ for the final New Moon intention setting of the year
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Daily gratitude journaling
One of my most cherished and most consistent daily practices is my gratitude journaling which I’ve been doing for a few years now.
I follow the well worn and widely shared format of filling a page in an A5 notebook with some scribbles about the day: what I’m grateful for, amazing things that happened (99% are marvellously mundane) and what I could do tomorrow to make it great.
I write this in bed with a pot of herbal tea just before I sleep and I very rarely miss it, even if it’s really late and I’m really tired. It’s my favourite way to enforce a pause and reflect on the day that has been.
Also on this page will be an affirmation, which is a sort of self-selected positive assertion that something exists or is true. This doesn’t mean the affirmations I write out are facts. They are aspirations for where I’d like to be heading, written as if they have already come to pass.
How affirmations feature in my journaling are usually in the form of powerful and positive sentences that embody the person I would like to be; they often start with ‘I am’.
The power of affirmations
The point of affirmations is that they’re meant to tap into your conscious and unconscious mind to motivate, challenge and guide you, to help you follow the path you wish to be on.
The idea is that positive thinking creates self-improvement and repeating your affirmations can transform thought patterns and mental attitudes. There’s good science to support the beneficial effects of affirmations too.
I like to think of affirmations as the sibling to intentions and mantras. For me, intentions are more action and event based (in case you’re new around here, setting intentions with the New Moon is something we do each month in our Sunday Reflections), mantras are ways of thinking (here are the 5 mantras I attribute much of my success to) and affirmations focus on the essence of me and who I am.
Part of my daily journaling ritual includes re-reading the entry on this date last year. This means as well as the notebook I am currently writing in, I also always have last year’s notebook by my bedside too.
When it comes to choosing an affirmation for the day, I open the old journal to a random page and if I’m vibing with it, I’ll write down that affirmation. If I’m not, I’ll flick forwards or back a few pages until I find one that’s striking that day’s chord. This means the affirmations get repeated every few days or weeks and at random.
Where I get my affirmations from
I collect these expressions like a magpie collects shiny trinkets. And I collect them from everywhere and anywhere. Articles, advertisements, books, interesting conversations, things I’ve overheard. When I come across a new one that’s vibrating on my wavelength, I’ll note it down and add it to the mix.
Whilst I don’t identify as a Buddhist, I try to live by some of Buddhism’s ideologies and I enjoy reading books on the topic. And so some of these affirmations have what you might call a Buddhist ‘slant’.
For me, an affirmation isn’t a destination. You don’t really ever arrive and I’m not sure you’re meant to. We are all a constant and magnificent work in progress.
This will be the final Thursday post of 2023 and I thought it would be a great and reflective excuse to share some of my most repeated and favourite affirmations with you!
I have quite a large pool of them but leafing through journal entries over the past 12 months, it’s these 30 I tend to write out and recite to myself the most. They are representative of the person I will always be working towards becoming.