Your thoughts are immensely powerful. The way you are thinking determines your feelings, decisions, and actions.
To know how to think is power. Unfortunately, school never bothered to give you an instruction manual for your mind.
This results in overthinking, stress, and our inability to pursue the things in life we really want.
But not everything is lost!
If you want to improve your thinking and become a more positive and successful person, you have to take things into your own hands.
Fortunately, the solution is simple! Focus on the positive side of life because a positive mindset brings positive things.
In daily life, when things don’t go as planned, we tend to sabotage ourselves by thinking nonsense like:
- I am just not good at X.
- I’m unlucky.
- I never have a chance with him/her.
- I am just a looser
- And so on!
During your life, you will think of million of such negative statements. And with each, you gonna reaffirm your negative self-picture. This way, you keep yourself small and miserable.
You are programming your mind into negativity. But you could change the course of your programming, by simply changing your statements into positive affirmations.
How to use affirmations correctly?
Beware. There are some rules for using affirmations more efficiently:
- Begin with “I†or “My†because a first-person perspective will tie your affirmations more strongly to your identity.
- Stay in the present tense. Don’t say “I will†but rather “I amâ€
This is because your mind doesn’t know the difference between reality and fiction.
If you tell yourself all the time that you are a successful person, sooner or later you will act like a successful person, even if you have no penny in your pockets. And if you act like being successful, you will likely attract success into your life.
Is there any science supporting the power of affirmations?
Ok, this might sound like stupid new-age stuff for you. However, there are tons of scientific papers showing the positive effects of affirmations. Among others:
- Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The psychology of change: Self-affirmation and social psychological intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 333-371.
“Timely affirmations have been shown to improve education, health, and relationship outcomes, with benefits that sometimes persist for months and years.â€
- Layous, K., Davis, E. M., Garcia, J., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Cook, J. E., & Cohen, G. L. (2017). Feeling left out, but affirmed: Protecting against the negative effects of low belonging in college. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 69, 227-231.
“In contrast, students who reported low belonging, but affirmed their core values in a lab-administered self-affirmation writing activity, gained in GPA over time, with the effect of affirmation sufficiently strong to yield a main effect among the sample as a whole.â€
Taber, J. M., Klein, W. M., Ferrer, R. A., Kent, E. E., & Harris, P. R. (2015). Optimism and spontaneous self-affirmation are associated with lower likelihood of cognitive impairment and greater positive affect among cancer survivors. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 50(2), 198-209.
“Optimism and SSA may be associated with beneficial health-related outcomes among cancer survivors.â€
So is it neuroscience or magic?
It’s important to state here that affirmations probably don’t work because of magic. Still, esoterics will tell you that with each affirmation you are sending a wish to the universe and blablabla.
But I assume that the truth is much simpler: Our mind gets bombarded with an incredible amount of information each second. Therefore, it has to filter. And what kind of filters it uses, depends on the personality you have.
You might be aware of a phenomenon that is happening when somebody is buying a new car.
Let’s say you just bought a red Honda Civic. Suddenly you see red Honda Civics everywhere. You never noticed them before. But after the purchase, your mind began to classify them as important and alert you when seeing such a car.
The same effect occurs in all aspects of our lives. Our mind shows us what it thinks is important to us.
Consequently, a negative person will filter out all the positive, and direct mental energy toward killed baby seals in Canada, the latest political scandal in the White House, or the stupid driver that cut your lane on the way to work.
With positive affirmations, you are telling your mind that you value positive stuff.
Now, you could call positive persons who seem to close their eyes to all the cruelty going on on our blue planet delusional. In fact, both groups are delusional, because both just see a fraction of reality.
In the end, you have to ask yourself: Who will be more successful?
A person who solely focuses on the negative consequences of a new technology? Or somebody, who sees opportunities due to new developments?
So, if it is inevitable to be delusional, I might be the better manual for life to focus on positive delusionality.
Ok, we can close the case about positivity. But why affirm things we want, like a successful career, good grades in school, a girlfriend, a muscular body, or a raise at work?
Well, if you for example tell yourself every day that you are a muscular person, after a while, your mind will start to believe your programming. It will filter reality according to your affirmation and will continuously present you with opportunities to gain muscle mass.
Why did I create a Notion template for positive journaling and affirmations?
I am using positive affirmations for two decades now. I first stepped into them at the age of 15, when my mother gave me a book about positive thinking. Inspired by the content, I started to write down my goals and the positive characteristics of my personality.
More than 10 years later, I stumbled over one of the notes I had written at that time.
I was startled.
Because I had achieved every goal I set out to do.
- Improving my marks in school. Check.
- Going to university. Check.
- Becoming a moderator on a gaming forum that I used to visit every day. Check.
Looking at the success I had with positive affirmations, I should use them every day. But the main problem with affirmations is that I am forgetting to do them when the times are bright.
They are a tool I am getting out of the basement when shit hits the fan. How much better it would be to use them constantly?
After starting to organize my business and personal life in Notion, I realized that I could use my life operating system to remind me to do affirmations constantly.
The result is my Positivity Notion Journal, which makes daily affirmations a habit for you.
It comes with
- ✅ 31 Daily Journal Prompts for Manifesting
- ✅ 5 Journals with tons of Journaling Ideas
- ✅ Daily Inspirational Affirmation Quote
- ✅Vision Board
Let’s have a quick look at the template:
Look Inside My Positivity Journaling Template for Notion
Daily Inspirational affirmations
Embed this widget on any page of your Notion workspace you visit frequently and get inspired by an inspirational affirmation. Of course, you can customize the affirmations to your personal needs.
Daily Journaling
Use the journaling section to write down your daily thoughts and for writing down your positive affirmations. If you have no idea what to write, get inspired by one of the many writing prompts I have included here.
Vision Board
Get more clarity about your life mission and write down the goals and dreams for every category of your life.
31 Journaling Prompts
Actually a template on its own. Get a new writing prompt for each day of the month and compare your writing throughout the year.
Get the Positivity Journal for Notion
Grab the template for 25% off by clicking on the following link: