affirmations

Doing self-love affirmations can improve your self-esteem, increase your self-confidence and improve your relationships.

Affirmations are positive statements that we consciously repeat to ourselves.  Doing self-love affirmations consistently and with intent, can change our mindset and attitude, which in turn can change our behavior.

And therein lies the magic, for when we start behaving in a different way, it means that we can start to make different choices which support and bring us closer to our goals.

When we become willing to change the way that we see ourselves and experience our life, self-love affirmations can help bring this change about.

Here are 10 beautiful self-love affirmations which you can use every day as part of building your self-love muscles.

I am worth loving.

I release fear.  I trust my inner wisdom.

I forgive myself.  I approve of myself as I am.

How self-love affirmations work

To understand how self-love affirmations can possibly work, it is helpful to look at how our mind works.

A useful way to look at the mind is to think of it as an iceberg.  The top part, which is above the water, is the conscious mind.

It is only a small part of the whole, but it is still powerful.  The conscious mind is the thinker. It processes thoughts, it is analytical and rational.  

You are probably using your conscious mind to read what I’m writing.  But it is what is going on behind (or to be more accurate *underneath*) the scenes which is more interesting to me.

Our subconscious mind is the part of the iceberg, which is hidden underneath the surface.  It operates beneath our conscious mind. It works like a huge databank, capturing information and executing instructions.

Think of the subconscious mind as the autopilot part of an airplane.

It is programmed with the route that it must take, and nothing will deviate it from this route, unless it gets programmed with another route.

The pilot can sit back, snack on peanuts and the plane takes care of flying itself.  

Similarly, your subconscious gets programmed basically from the day you are born.

It learns very quickly from your environment, your parents, your culture and your own personal experiences what route it should take.

It learns the rules about how lovable you are, how worthy you are and how acceptable you are.  

And so it ends up flying your life on autopilot, leading you to have certain beliefs and emotional blocks which can prevent you from achieving your goals and living a happy, successful and productive life.

Using self-love affirmations is one way in which you can reprogram your subconscious mind in order to load a route for your life, as it were.

I rejoice in being me. I am in flow with life.

I am surrounded by safety and love. All is well in my world.

I deserve to love myself and to be loved by others.

I am grateful for my life.

How to do self-love affirmations

It might feel very strange, weird and untrue to do these self-love affirmations at first.  After all, your subconscious does not believe any of this to be true!  

But, remember the beliefs that you have about your own self-worth has been put there through repetition and therefore, you can change them in the same way!

1 Write down (or print out!) the self-love affirmation that you want to imprint into your subconscious mind.  Make sure that you are clear, specific and positive in your statement.

2 Say the affirmation out loud, and make sure that you are actually paying attention to what you are saying.  A mistake many make is to ramble the affirmation without thinking about what it truly means.

3. Repeat 30 times throughout during the day. (You can actually choose any number, as long as you have a specific target).  It also helps when you set aside a specific time of day, for example in the morning and at night before bedtime, to do these affirmations.

I am willing to release the past.

When doing self-love affirmations don’t seem to work

Just like going to the gym once, is not going to give you strong muscles, it also takes time to build your mental muscles when you do affirmations. 

So, if you are consistent and loving while you do them, you will soon start to see the changes in both your inner and outer life.

It is easy to feel like nothing is working when you get triggered again or find that you have fallen back into old habits despite doing affirmations, or any type of self-work.

I look at it this way: how will you know whether what you are doing works, unless you get tested on it?  

So, when you get triggered *again* it is useful to ask yourself some reflecting questions around what triggered you exactly.  Engaging in meaningful questions is part of growing ourselves.

I also find it helpful to measure my emotional and mental response as it is now, to what it was before I started doing this self-love work.  

It’s usually a good indicator to see how far I have come, and where I can make any more adjustments.

Remember, we aren’t single-layered beings and any self-work demands that we go deeper and deeper each time.  

Think of your journey to self-love like an onion which has layers.  For each layer that you expose, another awaits you.

I am worthy. I am loved.

I am good enough.