How affirmations become part of you

Why affirmations aren’t wishful thinking – and how understanding neuroplasticity changed the way I use affirmations in everyday life.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have tried all sorts of daily practices. Perhaps you’ve got fitness routines, journalling practices, meditation and dietary requirements all swimming around in your brain on top of all the work and personal commitments you’re juggling.

And, if you’re anything like me, you’ll drop anything that’s not working for you.

I also have an aversion to anything that seems insincere. That’s why, at Dreams are Arrows, we never explicitly say: ‘Repeat this meditation daily for 21 days to achieve phenomenal results.’ That kind of sell isn’t who we are. We’re not the kind of wellness creators who want to push something onto you.

But we do want to encourage you to listen repeatedly. Not because it supports the algorithm. But because the science says it helps.

Neuroplasticity – the ability for our brains to change and adapt – means that when we repeatedly engage certain patterns of thought, whether they be stress or calm, self-criticism or self-trust, we strengthen the corresponding neural networks. Over time, the brain defaults to what is most familiar, because repetition makes those pathways efficient.

This means that listening to affirmation meditations again and again can lead to phenomenal results. For me, phenomenal results can be big but they can also be small – the incremental changes that I make to my way of thinking that flow through to my entire way of living.

An ordinary moment in my kitchen

There is a moment I think about often. I was standing in the kitchen, chatting on the phone to a friend, and someone else in my household kept interrupting. I could feel my chest tightening and irritation rising. I was about to snap at someone I love.

I ended the call. I went into the bathroom and shut the door. I took a deep breath. And then one of the affirmations I had written floated up into my mind:

No person or situation has the power to shake my sense of self.

I laughed a little. I loved that my affirmation had come to me like that. I breathed again. I went back into the kitchen and was kind to the person who had interrupted me. And life went on in the perfectly ordinary way it does.

You see, I had listened to that affirmation hundreds of times. I’d originally written the script, then we recorded it with our beautiful voice artist, Sam Anderson-Mayes, and then our sound producer, Nathan Broadbent and I took it through multiple rounds of audio production before we published it online.

And now I know, that line is a part of my way of thinking. No person or situation has the power to shake my sense of self. I can draw on that wisdom when I’m teetering on the edge of some drama or other. I can refer to it when I’m feeling anxious. And I can use it to come back to myself – the authentic expression of me that I’m aiming for in all my interactions, in each and every ordinary day.

Inviting affirmations into your day

You might think it’s easy for me to build repetition into my day, since I’m the one creating these affirmations. You’d be right. But I’ll be honest with you and say this is also why I create them: I need them! I need reminders to acknowledge my worthiness, to return to safety, to leave scarcity thinking behind me.

And I’m so happy to share these reminders with you.

I listen to the affirmations in different settings – in the car, in the background while I’m working, while the kettle is boiling or in the moments at the end of the day when I’m getting ready for bed. Please don’t play any of the resting or sleeping meditations when you’re driving or doing something that requires your full attention for safety reasons. But please do think about playing them for a few minutes here and there in amongst everything else you’re doing.

Some of the meditations are short – just a few minutes long – so it’s easy to slot them in. Some of them are longer, and they are created for your breaks, when you can sink into a comfy chair, sofa or bed and dive deep.

You can browse the library of meditations here.

Choosing an affirmation to focus on

Another method of embedding the practice is to choose one affirmation to focus on each day. This is a beautiful way of reminding yourself of who you are becoming.

We've created a selection of printable affirmation cards to help you do this. Each card pairs with one of the free affirmation meditations, so you can listen to the audio in the morning and let the card travel with you through the day – a quiet way of returning to the same words in two different forms. There's a listening guide included in the PDF download to help you align your practice.

And if you'd like to take this further, the printable affirmation journal gives you pages to set intentions for the day or the week, anchored to whichever affirmation you're sitting with.

Living intentionally

Sometimes, when I think of the concept of living intentionally, it makes me feel like I’m falling short. I’m not perfect. But I am trying. And I think that’s the greatest intention of all. I’m trying to create the life that I dream about.

I know that Yoda said ‘there is no try’ but I also live in the same world you do – the one where the news brings me down, where my family members irritate me and where I work way too many hours each and every week.

For me, living intentionally involves building short, simple practices into my day that help me move closer to the version of me who I want to be.

If you’d like to lean in to the affirmation that came to me in the bathroom, you can find the line ‘No person or situation has the power to shake my sense of self’ in this meditation. It’s a gentle place to begin.

Categories: : Affirmations