Pie in the sky and awkward affirmations

Thinking about affirmations

I am enough.

Do I believe that? Do I need to convince myself? Remind myself? Find the right neural pathway to make this thought automatic? 

I choose joy. 

What kind of woo woo hokeyness is this? If I write it fifteen times. Or a hundred. Or every day for twenty-one or thirty, will it sink into my being, seeping into my skin and into my cells? If I say it often enough, will I begin to subconsciously take steps to make it true? Will the subconscious lead to intention, to deliberate steps, changes, the charting of a new path of being?

I could put any words in those lines. The ones I use are different than these examples, but the "what if" is the same. If we use affirmations, get beyond feeling they are silly, believe in them wholeheartedly (or maybe even halfheartedly), can we evoke change? Can we shift our current thought patterns to more positive ones, and in that shifting change our outlook, our lives, our trajectory? Can we manifest the things we most want or need? Are the answers within us and within our control?

I tend to be skeptical. But there is also a thread of whimsy that winds through my consciousness. I don't necessarily think affirmations are whimsical. For some reason, today, whimsy is flickering in the wings trying to lay some kind of claim here.

I speak to the universe. I listen for answers. I pay attention when I see signs. 

These things are all serious, and yet somehow they are underwritten by something pure, hopeful, and resolute that is related to whimsy. 

Maybe it's just been a long week.

I don’t know why affirmations stood out as something that I need to try and try again. But as I thought about my morning routine and ritual and what elements I wanted to put into a small morning stack, affirmations were there, right alongside gratitude. 

Affirmations fascinate me. I have circled around them, again and again, but I’ve never found them a comfortable fit. It may be that I’m just too innately jaded to be able to give into them, but there is an allure, the glow of fireflies rising in the dusk.

I am worthy of deep bonds and connections.

This week, it feels especially surprising to be focusing on something positive, something hopeful, something at odds with my down-to-earth sensibilities. This week, just one day short of being a month, I put that skill no one wants to use again. As the years pass, or maybe as the frequency increases, I think I am getting less savvy at this, not better, but I did remember the glasses. I did snap a photo. I did stand on the sidewalk near the ambulance. I did wonder about everyone in the surrounding houses looking through windows. No one came out. No one has checked to see if things are okay. There is an invisibility to our lives that is unfathomable to me. How we fell out of the real world, the seeing world, and into this invisibility is hard to understand, hard to accept.

I stood there in my black wool dress (because I had started a new 100 days again the day before), and all I could do was straighten my back.

I am strong. I do what I have to do. 

I’m going to talk today, briefly, about affirmations. It is a large topic, and I’m going to barely skim the surface, but I hope you’ll think about what statements you might need to include in your day and what verb tense they should take.

I also created a set of comic panels as I thought about this topic this week. They are, in some ways, lighthearted. They are incomplete. They tell a partial story. They are tongue-in-cheek. They are a supplement. But they do, I think, capture some of the feeling of awkwardness I still feel with affirmations.

I find it even more awkward to share affirmations.

Even more so than gratitude, I think the things we chant or write over and over in this way are private, are deeply connected to who we are, to what we most hope and wish and need.

Amy

Quotes for the Week

"Who you are inside is what helps you make and do everything in life."—Mister Rogers

“Nothing can dim the light that shines from within.”—Maya Angelou

“If you really think small, your world will be small. If you think big, your world will be big.”—Paulo Coelho

“The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am.”—Eckhart Tolle 

“Embrace the glorious mess that you are.”—Elizabeth Gilbert

“I am in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing.”—Louise Hay

“I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.”—Audre Lorde

Approaching Affirmation

Gratitudes, glimmers, affirmations. It feels like a trifecta, three spokes on a wheel of balance and perspective, of self-awareness.

Affirmations are positive statements that you repeat to yourself. These statements are a pep talk of sorts, a bit of self-encouragement. These statements are designed to remind you or convince you of something good about yourself, about your strength, about your ability to move through the world in ways you find meaningful, about your ability to survive and to thrive.

“Affirmations… are phrases that, when repeated regularly, can change negative thoughts and behavior patterns.” — Everyday Health

You might think these statements are mostly wishful thinking. You might think affirmations are silly. You might be as likely to visit a fortune teller as to put your hopes and dreams into little statements you repeat and rewrite, fervently hoping to catch some universal stream to actualization. 

I am ______.

I am strong. I am brave. I am resilient.

I am smart. I am creative. I am capable.

I am likable. I am generous. I am funny.

Maybe affirmations seem natural to you. Or maybe you just can’t quite put yourself in that space yet. Or maybe you find them interesting from afar, the animals at the zoo or the curiosities other people have on their shelves.

I am exactly where I am meant to be.

I am loved.

Repeating affirmations is said to create new thought patterns in the brain. It makes sense that extra positivity can be helpful, can boost our confidence or our courage or can help us take steps to bring what we are telling ourselves into being. 

That’s the potential magic. If you say it with enough conviction, can you will it into existence?

If you say it enough times, can you make it happen?

If you repeat it over and over, will it be true?

Can you make yourself believe what you affirm? Can you make the universe hear you?

It’s easy to slide into lala land territory, but sometimes, the terrain that feels most awkward is exactly where you need to walk.

I am not afraid of the unknown.

I am able to handle what comes.

The same people who make the pretty lists about how to approach morning, and relationships, and life, of course, advocate affirmations.

I choose love over fear.

I am ready to step into my true power.

The examples I’ve included so far are philosophical and abstract. They are statements of fact, of a present state of being.

I am.

Sometimes you will see affirmations that are more along the lines of wishful thinking, wishes or hopes or dreams tied to specific things, successes and victories, marks of "winning."

When I read Julia Cameron’s Write for Life last spring, the coverage of affirmations bothered me. But the discussion of affirmations in an interview a few years back between Scott Adams and Tim Ferris made such an impact on me when I first heard it that I played it on one of our car rides to school the first year my son was in college.

Yes, there was something woo woo about it, but it was also fascinating.

I will win the lottery.

I will win the lottery.

No matter how many times I write that, I don’t expect it will happen. Beyond the ridiculous odds, the simple truth is that I don’t play the lottery. I can’t afford to waste money even on the chance in a billion. (But if I wrote it enough times, would I buy a ticket?)

I will have 1000 readers.

I will have 1000 readers.

These pie in the sky statements don’t work for me. They just feel silly. It is easy to write versions that are even more grandiose, that I can’t even bring myself to write here as examples.

Maybe I’ll never manifest my wishes precisely because I find them too silly, too preposterous. Is that the case?

I can’t bring myself to write (and rewrite) things that have no grounding.

Did I will my podcast away from success because I wasn’t willing to write 1000 times that I was a successful podcaster?

The niggling worry that there is something to self-actualization always gets me.

(I’ve talked often about my “field of dreams” approach. It never panned out, and yet it is why I’m here writing. It is what keeps me coming back.)

I am accountable. I stick with things. I finish what I start.

I find that what I am looking for in an affirmation is reinforcement, a positive spin on something I am doubting, or something I need to believe. I am looking for the pep talk that I know otherwise won’t happen.

I am writing for thousands of paying readers.

It's just silly.

I am able to support (or even supplement) my life with my writing.

Again, laughable.

I am growing a readership. 

I have something to say worth saying.

I am worth reading.

I am going to eventually get ten more followers.

Maybe I'll get a new follower next month.

I write even for one person.

The chain of thought can easily devolve. Finding the right line, the right phrasing, the one you believe and that is carefully crafted seems to be the trick and the key.

(The example could be about podcast listeners or Instagram followers or buyers of my art or any other similar category.)

Try Affirmations

Give affirmations a try.

You’ll find affirmations of all types. Some are concrete. Some are wishful or even wistful. Some sources say start with what you already believe. Some say ask a question instead. Some say the affirmation should be present tense. Some go for the pie.

Like gratitudes, and even glimmers, affirmations are personal. While there are blueprints out there, lists and memes and pretty social posts and videos and podcasts and meditation tracks that offer affirmations you can adopt, your own are within you. The blueprints can be a starting point. Listen for lines that speak to you, lines you need, either in whole or with your own twist, your own modification.

I think we each gravitate to a certain approach, a certain “voice” to our affirmations.

It makes sense to me that affirmations are personal. The ones I think I most need are ones that make me uncomfortable, make me teary. These are the reminders I need to hear, the conviction I need to believe. The change I hope to see.

Can I remap my brain with pathways of positivity and empowerment? I don’t know. But on the off-chance, affirmations are now part of my morning. I choose something different every day, a few somethings. I write a line. I write it three times. I don’t say it out loud, but I always hear my words in my head, so it feels similar to saying it aloud. I write another line. I write it three times, sometimes more.

I am probably losing the potential of anything to spontaneously manifest because I am doing too many or each one not enough times. But I feel good about the micro-affirmation process, this series of dominoes I am lining up, one by one. I write the affirmation. I hold it just long enough in the writing of it three times that I feel it steady beneath my fingers. It coalesces around me somehow, shimmering in vapors, almost invisible, part of a mesh of morning, diffuse like the peachy-orange creamsicle sky has been every day this week.

You will find your own. Here are a few sample affirmations to get you thinking:

• Doors are opening for me.

• I am capable. I am strong.

• I’m right where I should be.

• Everything is unfolding for my greater good.

• I face my challenges with courage.

• I choose joy.

• I am enough.

• I am liked.

• I am loved.

• I believe in myself.

• I have everything I need.

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Made It?

Thank you for reading along! I always enjoy your comments and invite you to chime in.

• Are affirmations a tool in your toolbox? Pink hammer if you are all in.

• Pie if you are a pie person and the type, if you have a favorite; pie chart if that’s more your style.

• Three words that start with P.

As always, feel free to rearrange, embellish, and add your own flair and whimsy. Feel free to share a joke.

Jump in in whatever way feels comfortable. If you enjoy the weekly post or know someone who might, please share.

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Illustrate Your Week — Week 43

The new prompts for Week 43 have been posted.

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