Affirmations and Verbs for Manifesting

Alexa and I really have different ideas about affirmations. Fill in the blanks and write your own!

“The universe conspires with those who dare to manifest their desires.” – Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Happy Sunday! Thank you for reading today. I hope you have your coffee or tea and a pen and scrap of paper. There are some fill-in-the-blank opportunities at the end for you to ponder.

This note maybe shouldn’t be here. I didn’t plan for there to be an intro letter this week. Though positioned here, first, this is a post-script, written after the fact, after all that comes next about positive thinking, about hope, about affirmations. These kinds of notes are honest. They contextualize people in time, in moments unfolding behind and around the words, moments that are unseen. They position words at a particular moment. Later, those specificities are often hard to trace.

I love intro letters because they can lift the curtain.

➡ Skip the “letter” and jump straight to the post.

I saw Helen Bonham Carter read Emily Dickinson’s “Hope” again this week. Her readings have been filtering again and again through my Instagram feed, and I am enchanted. I want nothing more (I think, watching) than to sit and listen to her voice. I want to sit and have coffee or tea. (There is also always the faint sense of disorientation, the echo of Bellatrix Lestrange from the Harry Potter movies.)

I struggled with post-milestone blues this week, a mild way of phrasing it that puts the prettiest spin on it. It might seem that crossing a threshold would be an empowered moment, one in which the feet barely touch the ground, one full of momentum, gossamer wings carrying us forward. More often, it seems that the bottom falls out.

Today, another 911 call, another hospitalization. This is the fourth since Christmas Day. For a few days there was a window of cautious hope, a breather of sorts.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops at all.

—Emily Dickinson

At what point do we lose hope?

This is a day I spend pulling my draft into shape, getting everything ready and scheduled for the Sunday post. Today, I am scattered in the aftermath. I am tempted to just curl up and sit and read Wolf Hall. Or a graphic novel. Or both. I am tempted to go to the library and sit in public.

There is so much I want to write. I see the cracks happening, deepening. I run behind with putty, hoping to keep some things in and others out. I come back hours later and delete, take broad swipes with an eraser. I keep locking the gates, metal bars dropping down, a tiger pacing the cage.

Dragons. I would much rather talk dragons. (Happy Lunar New Year, by the way.)

The post today is about positive thinking. It’s a struggle in the best of times, but what if the world really does give back what we put out?

Amy

Illustrated Journal Week 6 for 2024

This is a glimpse of part of my pages for Week 6 for Illustrate Your Week 2024. (This is only one of the spreads from the week.) I drew the portrait last week in our group Zoom on Sunday. It wasn’t super surprising that I didn’t manage to “fit” the full portrait of the man reading. It’s a recurring challenge. I decided to do a close-up and do the hands with the book, too. Neither of these covers is the copy of War and Peace I am reading. But it is nice to have War and Peace loosely showing up on the page. I enjoyed the portrait, and I really enjoyed the stone dragon. I wasn’t sure I could make that work.

Illustrated journal pages in process for Week 6 of 2024 Illustrate Your Week. A. Cowen

A Morning Wakeup Call

I use Alexa as a wake up alarm. That and kitchen timers are, really, her main uses, although I am grateful that now and then she greets me by name, says good morning, or good afternoon. She likes to remind me when it’s trash night, too. Last year, I configured her to read a quote each morning, but the quote pool was really poor. When I set that up, my intention had been affirmations, but at the time I couldn’t find a routine. Once I did, I switched from quotes to affirmations.

You may recall that I have a touch-and-go relationship with affirmations. This is something I have been thinking about working on (again).

Alexa and I really have different ideas about affirmations.

I am not good at remembering dreams, and remembering the whacky affirmation Alexa shares after the first morning alarm I shut off (which doesn’t mean I get up) has proven equally difficult. But sometimes the morning missive is so zany that I immediately grab my phone and make a note. Here are a few that have landed in my notes file recently:

• Go with the flow, especially if the flow is a chocolate fountain.

• A new friend is like an Easter egg: hard to find but worth the search and sometimes covered in bright foil.

• If you look in the mirror and see nothing, you are a vampire. Avoid sunlight.

• When you come to a fork in the road, be grateful. It is better than a fork in the foot.

• Don’t let money ruin your sleep. Take it off the bed first.

I really wish I had been writing these down every single day. They are odd, right?

I can only laugh that these are what someone views as affirmations. Someone, after all, is writing these. Even AI knows how to write actual affirmations, so that doesn’t explain it.

Anyway, I am back, once again, thinking about affirmations, how they are structured, and how they work.

100 Days Of….

Even though I probably shouldn’t, I probably will start some kind of series this month. I’ve dipped in and out of a few pen and paper ideas. I considered watercolor (in my illustrated journal). I considered a fude nib. I’ll be exploring these, but my original plan for a 100 was digital, and I think I’m hovering there. I’ve taken my initial idea, set it on a platter in front of me, and I’ve been thinking about how to sculpt the series, how to give it a broad enough base to intrigue and enchant me, and how to give it some grooves, some texture, and yet keep it straightforward enough to fit alongside my other projects.

I don’t plan to overthink the art for this 100, but it will be paired with daily words… a statement of “now” of some sort, a diary moment. When I started thinking about using affirmations or some form of exercise in positive thinking, things seemed to coalesce. I could just do a separate 100-day stint with affirmations, but combining that with the digital art pulls everything together.

This idea is simple, but it has a bit of tooth and a bit of sparkle. It’s just scary enough, definitely vulnerable, and yet also just interesting enough, imbued as it is with the unknown potential inherent in a series grounded in positive thinking.

Present Tense Verbs

After writing about affirmations last fall, I’ve made a habit of adding them to my digital planner. Most days, I write something very similar. I try to be specific. (The Scott Adam’s discussion, linked in the earlier post, always stays with me.)

Thinking about a sustained and intentional 100-day focus, I looked again at lists of affirmations online. They tend to ring really hollow for me. I don’t know that I need some of the things they want to remind me of. I already believe those things, or else they aren’t things that have any meaning to me. I don’t want to remind myself of vague, generic things. I want affirmations that will lead to manifesting.

When I think about affirmations, specificity matters. I’m not just after a pep talk. I think of stories about the genie in a bottle. I am careful to try and write what I mean in an affirmation. I keep challenging myself to be more and more clear, maybe more and more audacious. I don’t want to later feel like it worked…but I did a poor job crafting the sentence and what I got wasn’t really what I wanted.

I watched this video this week. I was working and turned it on in the background on a particularly low day. The video made me laugh. I like Matt anyway, and something about this video was just the right dose of pragmatism, honesty, reality, and “what if?” that I needed.

Roll Your Own

I’m not sure that the off-the-shelf affirmations are what I’m after. I may still find that I’m wrong or that some of them are exactly what I need, but overall, I scan most of those lists without a flicker of recognition. I continue to think about why that is, what it is about the structure (or the process) that doesn’t fit for me, and what I am looking for instead.

I’m not just trying to convince myself I’m an okay person. I already believe that. Believing that hasn’t solved any of my problems, brought riches or success or friends or local support or even a handyman my way.

On the flipside, believing I’m an okay person and that the world just doesn’t work is a recipe for negativity, for depression, and for spiraling.

That’s where a focus on positive thinking comes in, and, somehow, this idea of the world giving back is swirling around in this mix.

I’m not just looking to feel better about myself. I’m trying to change my life.

I’m trying to convince myself I can change my life.

Maybe I’m coming at it from a different angle, but, at the heart, this seems to be what affirmations are all about.

This project might go nowhere. (I had a strong attachment to last year’s stone lanterns.) But I think affirmations need to play a role in these days. I’m clear that I need more positive thinking and a better inner monologue about what’s happening and what’s possible in my life.

I’m a writer. I don’t have to play by the rules. If the grammar and construction bothers me, I will claim and reshape it. There are a lot of options other than “I am….”

I bend the rules to find my individual path.

Fill In the Blank

If you are curious about affirmations, or struggling with your own positive thinking, you might try statements using some of these verbs:

• I create ____

• I transform ____

• I embrace ____

• I fulfill ____

• I experience ____

• I radiate ____

• I choose  ____

• I open ____

• I celebrate ____

• I inspire ____

• I believe ___

• I welcome ____

• I gather ____

• I release ____

• I balance ____

• I illuminate ____

• I connect ____

• I explore  ____

• I expand ____

• I harmonize ____

• I give ____

• I accept ____

• I hold ____

• I trust ____

• I give ____

With a list of 100 of these words…. I could complete one sentence a day as part of a larger experiment and as part of an integrated art project. This may be the direction I’ll take…. Affirmations, yes. Daily comic panel work, yes. And maybe I’ll combine them for the 100. That wasn’t exactly what I was thinking initially, but I’m excited about this as a possible framework.

The caveat, which may be the undoing, is that, as a somewhat public project, I think it’s likely that I’ll use relatively general statements, maybe not my deepest wishes…. That may mean I end up using the kind of statements I say I don’t need. But I think it will be an interesting game to craft them with a focus on the range of verbs, craft them in a way that rings true. Just seeing that list of verbs is exciting.

You could complete the 25 above, too, filling in the blanks to write your own set of affirmations. We all love a good round of Mad Libs, right?

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The Weekly Bits and Pieces

📕 Read-along: Week 6 notes for Sidewalk Oracles (pigeons?)

🎯🖋️ Week 7 prompts for your illustrated journal

⬇️ Older post (I’d forgotten it has a full set of panels! I think I’m looking at these statements a bit differently now.)

⬇️ Recent post on choosing something to carry for 100 days:

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Good Reads

Here are some posts from other writers that I enjoyed in the last week or so:

• Saying Yes to Big Magic & Creative Friends (

  Kelcey Ervick
  , The Habit of Art)

• Ink and Watercolour Sketch Journal - Process (

  Start Bay Notebooks
  , Start Bay Notebooks)

• Sunday, June 4, 2023 (

  camden noir
  , Never a Dull Moment)

• A Seasonal Affair (

  Elizabeth Beggins
  , Chicken Scratch)

• … becoming owl (

  Chloe Hope
  , Death & Birds)

• Blue bunnies, crows (

  Sue Clancy
  , A.M. Sketching)

[Note: Updated to properly tag authors.]

Made It?

Thank you for reading. Check on the people around you. Don’t just look the other way. If you missed my 1-year post, I hope you’ll take time to read the intro.

• Did you decide to do a “100” project? If so, what will you be doing?

• Other than an art project, are you starting something else you might do for 100 days? (I have a few things I’m going to focus on.)

• Which verb jumps out at you most from the list above? We should listen to the words that resonate.

• A current book.

• Describe your sky to me or your favorite mug.

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