Using Daily Affirmations

Self-affirmations are often touted as a way to deal with negativity in life, as well as change how you view yourself, and in certain situations they’re effective. However, by themselves they’re not of much use if you don’t address the underlying beliefs that cause negativity in the first place. Deleting negative thoughts only stops them for the moment; they’re going to keep coming back until you change how you perceive the world, and more importantly, how you perceive yourself.

How do you change what you believe? You have to find out what that is first. Keeping a daily journal is a good start; writing down your thoughts on a regular basis can present a very clear picture of what you think not only about yourself, but about others, as well. A month’s worth of daily entries can be very revealing about what you believe, and provide a baseline from which to address beliefs you don’t like.

You can also ask people you trust and love to tell you what they honestly think of you. The people we love are usually a good source of feedback. After all, they reflect both our best and our worst qualities; that’s why we have them in our lives to begin with. Use them as a tool to learn how they view you, and from there to gain a better understanding of yourself.

You don’t actually have to talk to anyone if you’re not comfortable with the idea. Just hanging out with friends or family, and observing how you interrelate, will tell you plenty about yourself. Do you take to others easily, or do you often find them challenging? Are you loving, accepting, and gracious? Or are you judgmental, argumentative, or opinionated, even just in your own thoughts? The latter are all signs of someone uncomfortable with their self, and suggest a need to reinforce one’s beliefs by attacking the beliefs of others, or defending one’s own.

When we live in fear, we’ll go to great lengths to prove to ourselves that we’re ‘right’ about one thing or another, when in fact we’re running from our own self-doubt. The truth has no need of protection; finding our own truths means no longer running from ourselves, or others. You can discover from your dealings with people, including acquaintances or total strangers, how you view yourself.

All of these methods are meant to be self-revealing. In fact, you’re sending messages about your beliefs to yourself all the time, with everything you think, say or do. Just spend some time observing your own reactions to life; if you don’t like what you see, then maybe it’s time to change what you believe.

Keeping a checklist of your good points and bad points is also an aid to help you keep track of what you want to change, and from there learning which beliefs you hold that do not reflect the person you want to become. If you’re serious about changing who you are, you’ll need to be disciplined enough to do something serious about it. That means sticking to a method of uncovering your truths, and making a real effort to change.

How do you change? This is where affirmations find their best usage. Once you’re aware of the beliefs you want to change, you can focus much more clearly on who you want to become. You can change the habits of a lifetime’s wrong thinking by realizing when you’re stuck in it, and altering how you react accordingly. When you catch yourself reacting to life like you always have, stop and respond with whom you want to be, instead; that’s the key to using daily affirmations.

Bear in mind that since it’s taken a lifetime to become the person you are, becoming someone you’re happier being won’t happen overnight. It takes time, action, and effort to create a new you. Freedom from negativity can only occur when you put your mind to ridding yourself of your own negative beliefs, and focus on creating more positive beliefs to replace them.

This is what self-awareness is all about; learning the truth of who you are, and leaving who you’re not behind. As you grow in awareness of the true nature of the self, the mind begins to shift to reflect the truth of your existence, and the world you perceive becomes enriched with more promise and joy as a result.

We’re all on journeys of growth, and there is only movement forward, no matter how our lives may appear to us from one moment to another. However, there’s a difference between being aware of our progress, and wallowing in the self-despair or self-doubt that characterizes a person under the influence of ego alone. Recognize the events that happen in your life as positive movers of change, and change who you are as a result of your increased awareness of their meaning.

Personal Boundaries

Many a self-help manual suggest that setting boundaries to protect oneself against people deemed “unhealthy” presences in our lives is a positive, healthy step towards creating a positive, healthier you. Sometimes, the suggestion is accompanied by advice such as ensuring you're vibrating at the right frequency to attract only the people you want to your life. Or, you’re told to stand up for what you believe in by addressing it with those closest to you, and ensuring that they know what you will or will not tolerate from them. This may alienate people, however; it may be wiser to earn their respect by setting an example for them to follow by your acceptance of them, and why they're in your life, rather than dictate to them the terms by which they’re allowed to be in it, or not.

Setting boundaries does nothing to address the issues a person has with their beliefs about themselves, which is the basis for finding ourselves faced with challenging people to begin with. It has the opposite effect of keeping a person’s personal issues from being addressed at all. Why would a person ever worry about the behaviour of others unless they were worried about their own?

This is the crux of the matter. There is no need to set boundaries to protect ourselves from the actions or influence of people we find “unhealthy” or otherwise challenging. Setting boundaries does not keep anything or anyone out of our lives; it only keeps us hiding from seeing the truth about ourselves.

No matter the depth of our self-awareness, our higher selves present us with challenges throughout our lives in order for us to learn and grow. When we don’t rise to meet those challenges, we continue to get them until we do. The messages behind them can get more intense the more we ignore them, and sometimes result in serious repercussions to our well-being. This is not because our higher selves want to harm us; it’s because we're hiding from ourselves, and creating unconscious (and sometimes conscious) guilt as a result of our refusal to change our beliefs. Guilt is the most pernicious, pervasive emotion we can harbour, and when we do we can manifest all kinds of punishment on ourselves, as well as on others.

The irony of setting boundaries in our interactions with others is that we’re really setting boundaries against our own growth when we do it. Whatever it is were supposed to learn from a particular person that we find challenging to deal with will simply surface in another person at another place and time until we have received whatever message we’re trying to tell ourselves. Setting boundaries with the goal of preserving our truths in fact limits us from seeing them in the first place.

It’s inevitable that we’ll meet people who challenge us to examine our beliefs about ourselves, and give us an opportunity to grow. The people we find the most challenging to accept are the ones we learn the most about ourselves from; they’re mirrors reflecting some aspect of our beliefs that needs addressing. After all, we cannot set boundaries against everyone, and expect to win wisdom or greater self-awareness by closing ourselves off from the world behind walls of fear. We needn’t worry about attracting people into our lives who don't serve our growth if we’re doing what is needed to preserve the path of it ourselves. The opposite is true; the more we examine and alter our beliefs to reflect our inner truths, the more we’ll attract people into our lives who also reflect those truths.

If we learn from our encounters with people who challenge us, we'll eventually find those challenges disappear of their own accord, because we have moved beyond needing them, and will no longer attract whatever it is they were meant to teach us. It’s that simple. As we grow in acceptance of who we are and the truths we represent, we no longer need fear anyone. Setting boundaries is a mark of living in fear, not courageously protecting the truth. The truth needs no protection; it needs only acceptance in order to see the light of day.

Challenges come from our inner selves; they have nothing to do with anyone else. We create them for ourselves, and rather than shut them out behind boundaries of insecurity, we should embrace and learn from them, so we need not experience the same challenges over and over again. This is the path we need to take to change our beliefs to reflect our truths, and to find greater peace in our lives. Face the fears you have about yourself, and your need to hide from yourself will fade away.