How To Write Effective Affirmations

Affirmations have become really popular, especially with the rise of social media.

You’ve probably seen Instagram, Twitter and Facebook posts that quote positive affirmations.

Often, these quotes are accompanied with a message that instructs you to repeat the affirmations and it will change your life.

You may have even tried repeating positive affirmations and seen some results, but what are these magic words that claim to transform your mind and your life?

As it turns outs, there’s a lot of science to back up exactly how a set of positive words can totally improve your mind and body.

Positive affirmations are so much more than just feel good quotes and positive statements.

In short, positive affirmations are statements that are spoken, and often repeated, to encourage and uplift the person speaking them.

In reality, a positive affirmation is actually the language of the brain.

We’ll explain more about this in the next section, but for now, let’s look at the elements that make up a positive affirmation.

There are a lot of books and websites that claim to list positive affirmations.

You’ll often see huge lists like “100 Positive Affirmations,” but be careful before repeating those affirmations to yourself in the mirror each morning.

Because positive affirmations are the language of the brain, they follow a specific formula.

3 Elements Of Affirmations

If you come across a quote on the internet or in a book that claims to be a positive affirmation, but doesn’t follow this formula, your brain won’t register the thought accurately.

It turns out, our brains are pretty strict and straightforward about their language rules.

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 Positive affirmations are always in the present tense. If you see a positive affirmation that says “I will,” “I used to” or “I’m going to,” move on. Your brain only responds to present tense statements.

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 Positive affirmations only include positive words. If you see a positive affirmation that has words like “don’t,” “can’t” or “won’t,” it’s not a statement you’ll want to repeat. It takes your brain a lot of extra work to get past negative statements and transform them into positive ones.

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Positive affirmations are spoken as statements of fact and truth. Statements that contain words like “might” and “could” aren’t nearly as powerful as statements that contain words like “am” and “do.”

Your brain is a complex and complicated network of information that is always sending and receiving thoughts and instructions at lightning speed.

Every simple action you take is really a set of complicated communications between cells called neurons.

Because of the amount of information your brain has to process every single second, it takes everything you think and say in a very literal way. When you understand how this literal communication works, you begin to see how this affects your emotions, behaviors and even physical well being.

The Literal, Present Tense brain

The brain doesn’t communicate in future or past-tense.

Everything that happens is happening in the moment for your brain.

When you think a thought, your brain processes the information literally and prepares you for the action that should immediately follow the thought.

For example, if you think to yourself, “I’m going to have a great time on my date this weekend,” your brain essentially hears “good date” and starts firing off all the connections to make your date amazing.

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The problem is, it starts firing off those connections in the moment.

You may get a boost of confidence and even start sending off some sexy pheromones, but it will be in that moment, right then and there.

This effect is highlighted when you start to fear something that ...