Affirmations for mental health

If you have a few helpful affirmations for mental health on hand, you can manage difficult moments and situations more effectively. They will also improve your self-esteem at the same time. Everyone has daily ups and downs, but affirmations are an easy way to directly impact your wellbeing in a positive and immediate way.

Your personal inner critic may be damaging your mental health

Everyone has a personal inner critic and it’s likely that yours is really harsh on you. In my practice, I find that my clients say nasty things to themselves and about themselves that they would never dream of saying to others. Often it’s such a long-standing habit that it actually feels “natural”.  If you resonate with this, consider that your personal inner critic with his/her stream of self-criticism may be damaging your mental health.

Your inner narrative shapes your reality

Your inner narrative shapes how you feel about yourself (and others) in the moment, which means it impacts your self-esteem.  In a way, your inner narrative even shapes your reality. A negative, harsh, and demanding inner narrative makes you feel bad about yourself. Often, it also makes you feel bad about everything around you.

Affirmations for mental health make you feel good about yourself 

The exciting thing is that when you use affirmations to build a kinder, more encouraging and self-loving inner voice, you feel good about yourself. You begin to shape your reality in a way that builds your mental health instead of destroying it.  You change your own self-concept.

Learn how to think in a more helpful way

The way you think makes a big difference to your life. Affirmations are a kind of cognitive restructuring, which means recognising less helpful patterns of thought and making changes so you learn to think in a healthier, more adaptive way.

Affirmations for mental health might feel a bit weird

Louise Hay was a famous self-help writer who firmly believed in the transformative power of thought, and using daily affirmations to improve wellbeing.  Millions of people have read her books and applied affirmations to improve their wellbeing. But if you’ve never used affirmations, it can feel quite strange to suddenly start looking into the mirror and telling yourself how wonderful you are.

The research supports affirmations for mental health

It’s helpful to know that there is some solid science to support using affirmations for mental health. Studies confirm that affirmations help you to build a more optimistic, hopeful narrative about yourself and others. Affirmations improve your stress levels and encourage positive changes in behaviour. They are positively linked to academic achievement, and also make you more resilient.

Affirmations for mental health in a handy toolkit

Start by creating a handy toolkit of helpful affirmations for mental health and practice saying them to yourself as often as possible. You’ll notice that your relationship with yourself becomes healthier, happier and more satisfying.  The effect of the improvement will also send positive ripples into your relationships with others.

BFB Success Formula: How to create positive affirmations for mental health

1. KISS – Keep It Short and Simple. This makes your affirmation a lot easier to remember and you won’t get distracted while saying it.
2. Affirmations need to be in the present tense, as if they’re already happening. So instead of saying I will get healthy, say “I am healthy”.
3. Say it to the mirror – affirmations said in front of the mirror, looking into your own eyes, are very powerful. It starts off weird but it gets easy with practice.
4. Keep it real. If your brain refuses to say that you’re healthy because you’re so far away from health, it might be better to adapt and say something like “I am becoming healthier every day”.
5. Use guided affirmations – there are some excellent apps out there which you can simply download on your phone and start using immediately.

If affirmations have made a positive impact on your life, please email me or leave a comment on this blog. And as always, if you enjoyed reading this or found it helpful, please go ahead and share it 🙂