What Is The Best Affirmation Wording?
Make your affirmations work with the right affirmation wording
Affirmations are helpful.
We can use them to reinforce or intentionally create a certain image of our own selves, in order to gain confidence and achieve goals.
Since we use affirmations to make a positive impact and effect change, the way to word affirmations is important and needs to help that purpose.
Which words?
Generally speaking, there isn't only one way to word your affirmations for them to be effective, because it all depends on what works for you in particular.
However, there are certain elements that should always be present, as you will see below.
Make it believable
The most common way to word affirmations is by using "I am..." or "I have...". However, Dr Robert Anthony explains in 'Beyond positive thinking' that it is more powerful to use "I intend to..." or "It is my intention to...", because that's more believable.
You can go back to these positive thinking affirmations and change all sentences to "I intend to..." and see what you feel about them.
If you are religious, you may want to use an affirmation wording that blends in your religious beliefs. For example, if you are a Christian you may find it useful to follow the Christian affirmations that Norman Vincent Peale gives in his classic book 'The power of positive thinking', which combines positive thinking and Christianity.
The ingredients
Whether you use "I am..." or "I intend to...", include these elements when choosing the words for your affirmation:
- Present tense: if you are able to feel in the now that you will have or be something, then it can happen. If you state your affirmation in the future, whatever you want will stay in the future.
- Positive: your affirmations should state what you want, not what you don't want. Use positive sentences instead of negative wording like "no", "never", "get rid of", "don't". If you don't want a situation, affirm the opposite, which is what you do want.
- Emotion: make sure that your affirmations bring up good feelings in you. They must make you feel good with yourself and with whatever you are stating.
Many authors have written about affirmations. For instance, Mike Dooley explains in 'Infinite Possibilities' how our words have power, and how we can use them to create the life of our dreams.
Examples
Following Dr Robert Anthony's way for affirmation wording, see these examples:
- I intend to take responsibility for all my actions
- I intend to live with courage
- I intend to be self-assured and self-confident
- I intend to enjoy my life with enthusiasm
- I intend to have a positive attitude towards difficult circumstances
- I intend to let the people in my life know that they are important to me
- I intend to forgive myself lovingly for the mistakes I make
- I intend to live a fulfilling life and enrich other people's lives
Now that you've seen different ways of wording your affirmations, you can get a feel for what works best for you and create your own powerful affirmations ;)
"The limits of my language means the limits of my world."
Ludwig Wittgenstein