Personally, I don’t see anything odd about affirmations, but I know other people do.
Perhaps it’s something about talking to yourself, or trying to convince yourself of something, but we are always doing this anyways.
For instance, yesterday in a meeting, my host kept saying, “I’m risk averse.”
It’s true, he is risk averse, and by continuing to say it, he keeps reminding himself of that wild and ferocious bear some call “risk.”
You Are What You Repeat
That’s not to say it’s a good or a bad thing for him. We are all averse to risk, but you don’t have to keep reminding yourself to avoid getting eaten by a bear today.
All day every day we are saying (or thinking) affirming thoughts.
You might say to your spouse “I love you,” which hopefully deepens the feeling between you, in the same way that you might say, “I can’t be bothered working today,” which certainly makes you less effective in your job.
Both are affirmations that drive thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Repeat What Serves You
The question is, What thoughts do you want to keep affirming? What feelings do you want to keep having? What actions do you want to keep taking?
There’s a lot of great stuff on affirmations (and, truthfully, they can be useless if used without real intent and feeling), but at the least I would suggest writing up and practicing some of your own.
Here are some of my favorite top performance affirmations from one of my favorite top performance authors, Tom Hopkins, which might give you some ideas:
- Today, I will win. Why? I’ll tell you why — because I have faith, courage and enthusiasm.
- I have clearly defined goals and I will pursue them today with enthusiasm, determination and discipline.
- Today, I will do what I fear most and thus I’ll control my fear.
- I see every problem as an opportunity to overcome a challenge.
- Today, when I feel stress, I will consciously relax and let go of my stress.
- I am determined to work harder on myself than on my job. This way I can become the person I want to be and end up doing a better job than ever before.
- I am a winner, I work for a winning company, and because of my contribution and cooperation we will keep on winning.