HERLIFE Magazine

herlife | healthThe Power ofAffirmationsby catie watsonI am powerful.I am filled with joy.I am surrounded by love.I have abundant energy.I love and accept myself.I am successful in whatever I do.I am strong and in perfect health.I am grateful for the people in my life.Each of us has an inner dialogue that we carry on with ourselvesthroughout the day. This dialogue is so deeply engrained thatwe usually aren’t aware of it, but psychologists say that it cancontrol our moods and influence the outcome of important events inour lives. When your inner dialogue is full of fear and negativity, it cannegatively impact your reality.Affirmations are a powerful tool that can change the course ofyour life for the better. If you were to spend a day focused on yourinner dialogue, you might be shocked by the level of negativity. You’renot alone—researchers have found that 80 percent of the average person’sthoughts are negative. What’s the harm? Each time we fear that“Affirmations are a powerfultool that can change the courseof your life for the better.”we can’t succeed or expect that an event will turn out badly, we sendmessages to our subconscious mind that can keep us from trying ourhardest or even cause us to fail. So if you spend the day telling yourselfthat you’re not good enough or smart enough or pretty enough, yoursubconscious mind will accept it as reality.Affirmations are positive statements that are used to create a positivemood. Repeating an affirmation again and again can actually trainthe mind. While the conscious mind focuses on the affirmation, thesubconscious mind undergoes subtle changes. Through affirmationsyou can transform your attitudes, habits and behavior. These transformationshave the potential to profoundly impact external events.Writing in his Psychology Today blog, UCLA professor RonaldAlexander defines an affirmation as “a statement said with confidence20 HERLIFEMAGAZINE.COM