Do self-affirmations work?

[DanielLewis]

Most of us here have probably heard of self-affirmations. If not, they are positive statements you say about yourself over and over again, repeatedly, or ones that you listen to. For example, some are "I am intelligent", "I am confident", "I have much to offer the world", "People like me", "I believe in myself and my abilities", "I am not ashamed of my athlete's foot." The idea behind them is that, if fed to your mind repeatedly, they'll become so ingrained that you'll start to believe them, thus improving your confidence. Even if you believe some of them already, feeding them to your mind repeatedly supposedly improves your confidence.

I have tried these a little bit, and I have considered writing out a list of my own affirmations about myself, recording them, and playing it on repeat as I sleep. However, I am skeptical of their effectiveness. On the one hand, I have heard people say they work and, on the other, they don't. I think they could because I remember when I played football, our team would chant "I believe in myself and I believe in my team!" repeatedly before the game. Our confidence would skyrocket. That is a self-affirmation and it worked in that brief moment. But many people use affirmations in hopes that they will improve their confidence in the long-term.

What do you think about them? Have you tried it, and did it improve your confidence?

 

[Sacrament]

Depends on many different factors, such as: are you saying those things to try and fool yourself into feeling confident, or do you actually believe those things and are saying them to yourself in order to genuinely feel the confidence you deserve?

The first one is like trying to convince yourself that you're confident before a job interview when you don't feel it at all and are convinced you'll mess up in some way; the second one is the equivalent of making a list of all the things that are genuinely positive about yourself and how you deserve that job because of your qualities, etc.

 

[squidgee]

In my experience, no they don't work. I never really expected it to work either. This is especially the case if as Sacrament said above you're trying to fool yourself into feeling better. There's a possibility it may make you feel worse if you truly don't believe your own affirmations.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

 

[elephant99]

I find that the sort of unrealistic positive ones don't work, because I can't believe what I'm saying. Affirmations based around acceptance I've found do help.

So instead of telling myself "I am confident" I might say "I am anxious and that's ok. I behave anxiously and other people might notice this. I know however a lot of other people get anxious and I don't have to feel ashamed of myself. I can accept myself and I can work through it."

 

[zharl]

Most of us here have probably heard of self-affirmations. If not, they are positive statements you say about yourself over and over again, repeatedly, or ones that you listen to. For example, some are "I am intelligent", "I am confident", "I have much to offer the world", "People like me", "I believe in myself and my abilities", "I am not ashamed of my athlete's foot." The idea behind them is that, if fed to your mind repeatedly, they'll become so ingrained that you'll start to believe them, thus improving your confidence. Even if you believe some of them already, feeding them to your mind repeatedly supposedly improves your confidence.

I have tried these a little bit, and I have considered writing out a list of my own affirmations about myself, recording them, and playing it on repeat as I sleep. However, I am skeptical of their effectiveness. On the one hand, I have heard people say they work and, on the other, they don't. I think they could because I remember when I played football, our team would chant "I believe in myself and I believe in my team!" repeatedly before the game. Our confidence would skyrocket. That is a self-affirmation and it worked in that brief moment. But many people use affirmations in hopes that they will improve their confidence in the long-term.

What do you think about them? Have you tried it, and did it improve your confidence?

Well, I've never tried recording self-affirmations and playing them back while I sleep, but I can say that giving myself a pep talk in my backyard has boosted my mood and optimism when thinking about specific obstacles, but these feelings are usually short-lived.

In other words, if I have some sort of project or deadline that I have to meet, the self-affirmations are somewhat effective in boosting my mood and improving my productivity, but in terms of improving my quality of life? Not so much.

Also, the success I've had is spotty. Sometimes it works. Sometimes its done little to improve my mood and the only thing my time outside accomplished was scaring the neighbors.

 

[zharl]

Also, if you don't believe the "affirmations" they aren't affirmations. Repeating them won't do jack. Any time it's worked for me, its when I've literally convinced myself with a valid argument.

Wow. I just admitted to arguing with myself. I think that means I'm nuts...you might want to disregard what I have to say.

 

[BlueDays]

I don't believe they work in the long term.

Your brain is well aware of the truth and if your brain knows what your saying repeatedly is not true, it just won't stick.

It is kind of like repetitively telling yourself your arm is not broken. Your brain knows it is broken. Repeating a lie that it is not broken won't make your brain eventually believe it.

 

[Sacrament]

I find that the sort of unrealistic positive ones don't work, because I can't believe what I'm saying. Affirmations based around acceptance I've found do help.

So instead of telling myself "I am confident" I might say "I am anxious and that's ok. I behave anxiously and other people might notice this. I know however a lot of other people get anxious and I don't have to feel ashamed of myself. I can accept myself and I can work through it."

Those are the ones I was talking about. They're the ones that make more sense because you're not saying vague things like "I'm awesome and I deserve everything I want", you have to actually say specific things about yourself that you accept and have made peace with, such as anxiety, or blushing, or OCD, etc. Those are the ones with the most potential to work.

 

[spring]

They have for worked for me, however I went through a process of learning how to use them correctly.
First of all the most important aspect of achieving any set of skills or new habits is persistence and practice , meaning that you will not get results if you are not willing persistently keep on doing it even if you do not see any changes in the beginning.
And you need a great amount of focus , focuing all of your desire to change for the better as a kind of fuel to keep you going through difficult times when you feel like giving up.
I dont think that the effect of affirmations is a complex psychological phenomena That we can not explain by reason and our current scientific findings.
They can be something as simple as saying I love myself every chance that you get.
At first it might sound akward and stupid but after a while it will start to grow on you your feelings toward that concept will very gradually start to change.
Don't try to say things that are not believable for you at the moment and make you feel bad while saying it. For example if I don't have any friends right now and I want to find friends ,saying to myself " I have a lot of friends " might not work for me because it might further increase the feeling of not having any friends in reality.
I can start by saying more general things to myself that will uplift my overall mood on a daily basis so that over time it will become easier for me get used to the mentality of being a pleasant and sociable person.
Also instead of expecting to get results immediately , do it because it makes you feel better and you enjoy doing it , the main goal must be to create the feeling that you are looking for in yourself first . There is no point in merely repeating something if you don't work on creating how it would feel like to be like that and gradually stabilizing that feeling within yourself.
I don't know if listening to them while you sleep would work but listening to your recordings before you go to the bed or simply just repeating them in your head alongside listening to a soothing music has worked for me.
My confidence has grown tremendously over the past couple of years by trying to think of ideas that have a more positive nature and say things to myself that I like to experience and be . Over time it has helped me to contemplate on the meaning of a lot of positive notions such as what does it mean to truely love and accept myself and how to make peace with my vulnerablities while trying to move forward and stay hopeful instead of beating myself up.
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[LKK]

Yes I would imagine that it would work, however it would depend on what the affirmation was--you have to be able to believe it, and to do that it has to be as near to true as possible, or atleast plausible.

For example, it seems to be likely that with the right technique one could convince oneself of certain qualitative type ideas... for example 'I enjoy my own company' or 'I'm valuable'. However, it won't work (or it will and will equate to arrogance) if you convince yourself of things that are objectively not true, such as 'I'm muscly' if you're a pencil neck, or 'I'm a fast brick layer' if you're slow, etc