Achieving Supreme Health With Self-Affirmations.

Do you begin your day with the best self-affirmations?

If the alarm went off 45 minutes early in the morning so you can exercise before heading into the office, how would you react? Would you reply with negative affirmations and tell yourself that skipping one day won’t hurt or that exercise is pointless?

When you pass that fast food store with the $1.39 burgers, and you’re low on time and big on hunger, what choice do you usually make? Eating healthier isn’t always as easy as picking up convenient, greasy foods. But would you go the extra mile for a healthy meal?

What about sleep? In addition to exercising and eating right, you also need to get enough sleep to live a healthy lifestyle. When you don’t sleep well, you’ll be less inclined to make healthy food and exercise decisions.

Sleeping well helps you become more energetic and passionate about all things in your life, including your commitment to your health!

It can be difficult to get enough rest when there are things you’d rather be doing!

Do you give up your sleep if you have work to do? Do you stay up late partying whenever you can?

Self-Affirmations for Health Can Help!

In those moments when you feel weak and don’t want to eat right, get enough sleep or exercise, self-affirmations targeting your health can be just what you need to help you make a healthy choice.

Self-affirmations are positive statements that replace the negative thought processes in your mind. If you think they don’t work, I have news for you – do they ever!

When you start to talk yourself out of exercising, a negative self-affirmation is being repeated in your mind, a self-affirmation that says, “I can’t do it.” So if a negative affirmation works; why can’t a positive one?

When you’re about to choose junk foods instead of the good stuff, repeating a self-affirmation in your mind will remind you of your desire to be healthier and help you become more consciously and subconsciously aware of your healthy living goals.

For example, you can say, “I allow my body to receive enough rest and exercise,” or “The more I take care of myself, the better I feel.” Using statements like these will give you that gentle push you need when you feel inclined to be pessimistic.

Strive to repeat healthy living self-affirmations to yourself several times each day and whenever you need encouragement. It will take a bit of time, but soon enough, you’ll find yourself making healthy decisions more and more often.

The more often you choose the healthy lifestyle you desire, the better you’ll feel, both physically and mentally. Commit to your health by incorporating healthy living self-affirmations into your daily routine today!

Many of us wish to lose weight or get in better shape. Perhaps you’re concerned about your health and have decided to take better care of your body. Are there things you could be doing to be healthier? If so, you’re not alone!

When you choose the right foods and exercise, you’ll look and feel better, reduce your stress levels, sleep more soundly, have more energy, and enjoy better health. Sometimes, though, making the right choices isn’t as easy as it sounds.

The good news is there are some simple things you can do to help make positive choices and achieve the better health you deserve!

Before I recommend you, I want to tell you what science says specifically about the effect of self-affirmations on health.

Let’s take a look at the research.

The development of self-assertion theory has led to neuroscientific research to investigate whether we can see any brain changes when we positively affirm ourselves.

MRI evidence suggests that specific neural pathways increase when people practice self-assertion tasks (Cascio et al., 2016).

If you want to be super clear, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, involved in positive appraisal and self-related information processing, becomes more active when considering our values (Falk et al., 2015; Cascio et al., 2016).

The results of a study by Falk and his colleagues suggest that when we choose to practice positive affirmations, we are better able to see “information that would otherwise be threatening as more relevant and valuable to ourselves” (2015: 1979). As we will see in a moment, this can have several benefits because it relates to how we process information about ourselves.

Benefits of daily affirmations

Now that we know more about the theories that support positive affirmations, here are six examples of evidence from empirical studies that suggest that positive self-affirmation practices can be beneficial:

• Self-affirmations have been shown to decrease health-impairing stress (Sherman et al., 2009; Critcher & Dunning, 2015);
• Self-affirmations have been used effectively in interventions that led people to increase their physical behavior (Cooke et al., 2014);
• They can help us perceive otherwise “threatening” messages with less resistance, including interventions (Logel & Cohen, 2012);
• They can make us less likely to ignore harmful health messages, responding instead to change for the better (Harris et al., 2007) and eat more fruits and vegetables (Epton and Harris, 2008);
• They have been positively related to academic performance by mitigating the decrease in GPA in students who feel excluded in college (Layous et al., 2017);
• Self-affirmations have been shown to reduce stress and rumination (Koole et al., 1999; Wiesenfeld et al., 2001).

What Are the Health Benefits?

As the studies above suggest, positive affirmations can help us respond in a less defensive and resistant way when presented with threats. One study mentioned above showed that smokers reacted less dismissively to graphic cigarette packet warnings and reported intention to change their behavior (Harris et al., 2007).

But more generally, an adaptive, broad sense of self makes us more resilient to difficulties when they arise. Whether it’s social pressures, health information that makes us feel uncomfortable, or feelings of exclusion, a broader self-concept can be a beneficial thing to have.

9 Positive Affirmations for Women

Looking for some ideas to create your own affirmations? Here are some nice examples:

1. I choose to be happy;
2. My life is taking place right here, right now;
3. I’m gifted with and surrounded by amazing friends and family;
4. I opt to rise above negative feelings and ditch negative thoughts;
5. I am resilient, strong, and brave, and I can’t be destroyed;
6. Nobody but me decides how I feel;
7. When I lie down to sleep, everything is as it should be, and I rest content;
8. I am in charge of my thoughts, and I don’t judge myself;
9. I accept and love myself, thoroughly and completely.

You can find more of these affirmations here.

9 Positive Affirmations for Men

Here are some affirmations for men, including affirmations of self-acceptance and positive body image. These affirmations are based on a larger list of 30 affirmations and were adapted using the cognitive behavioral therapy idea of “negative core beliefs.”

1. I am responsible for looking after myself;
2. By being myself, I bring happiness to other people;
3. My goals and desires are as worthwhile as everybody else’s;
4. Through courage and hard work, I can achieve anything that I set my mind to;
5. I’m fine with who I am, and I love who I am becoming;
6. Through my contributions, I make positive changes to the world;
7. My body is amazing just the way it is, and I accept myself this way;
8. I choose only to surround myself with supportive and good people;
9. Whenever I fall, I get back up again.

Conclusions

Self-affirmations may remind people that they care about more than just the threatened identity and that by transcending these narrow concerns, they may adopt a proper perspective on the self. Positive self-affirmations serve to de-emphasize the implications of a threat by placing it in a broader context.here