Like most things in life that are worthwhile, self improvement involves stepping out of your comfort zone. That’s what I’m trying to do with my 30-day positive affirmations experiment.

For the longest time when I thought about positive affirmations, I had a crazy image of Stuart Smalley from Saturday Night Live —>.

For those of you who don’t know, Stuart Smalley was a character on SNL created and played by comedian Al Franken. He was a non-licensed self-help therapist who coined several funny phrases.

• “That’s just stinkin’ thinkin!”
• “You’re should-ing all over yourself.”
• “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt!”
• “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”

So anyway, that was my previous view of positive affirmations. But the more I read about self improvement, the more I found stories of how positive affirmations can change lives.

In this article I’ll share with you how I am aiming to use positive affirmations to overcome feelings of depression, stop procrastinating, battle the fear of failure, and have better focus in my online business.

I’ll also provide you with some resources to help you experiment with your own positive affirmations, and some examples (including my own) to get you started.

What I want to change using positive affirmations

In this experiment I’m trying accomplish several things. Even though a positive affirmation can be as simple as “I like myself”, I wanted something a little more substantial. Here is an overview of what I aimed to reinforce and/or change in my own positive affirmation.

1. Reinforce positive charactertics to overcome lack of productivity and feelings of depression - We’ve faced quite a few challenges recently including, Hurricane Katrina, the loss of both our fathers within a month of each other, and foreclosure. All of these have contributed to my lack of productivity, energy, and focus. It’s time to turn things around.
2. Fight procrastination and the fears of success and failure - For most of my life I’ve been bad about procrastinating. I’ve also identified the fear of failure and the fear of success as major culprits in my life. Hopefully, this exercise will help rid these from my subconscious.
3. Increase the focus of my online business activities - I’ve had my own online business hobby for a while now. It’s time to buckle down and focus on making real money with my efforts.

How to use affirmations

Affirmations work by using repetition to change your subconscious mind. Your subconscious is like your control center. It takes whatever is input as literal and causes you to act accordingly. So when people say things like “I’m such a loser”, “I’m a terrible dancer”, or “I dislike other people”, they are destined to become self-fulfilling prophecies. By the same token, you can use affirmations to positively change multiple aspects of your life.

Here’s 3 easy steps to writing your own affirmations

1. Figure out what positive traits you possess - Don’t be shy. Are you good-looking, highly motivated, friendly, energetic, goal oriented, intelligent, or witty? Write down the attributes that you would like to emphasize and use to achieve your goals. Eg. I, Kevin Givens, am a fun, witty, and smokin-hot blogger. (o.k. maybe not)
2. Prioritize and write out the goals you want to accomplish with your positive affirmation - A lot of information available tells us to use statements like “I will be rich” or “I can be happy”. One book I read claimed that it’s better to use present-tense statements like “I am rich and happy” because your subconscious doesn’t know the difference. If you continue telling your subconscious that you already are a certain way, you will start acting in alignment with that belief.
3. Create a plan to repeat your positive affirmations daily - Some people recommend writing, repeating, and even meditating on your positive affirmations. For this experiment I kept it much simpler. I wrote out the affirmation on one side of a 3 x 5 index card. On the other side I wrote out the days 1-30 with an “M” (for morning) and “N” (for night) beside each number. I read the statement aloud twice each day and mark off the appropriate day and time.

There are many more sites that have in depth articles on how affirmations work and strategies for using them. I’ll have some links for you at the end of this article in case you would like more information.

Examples of affirmations

By now you should have a decent idea how affirmations work. Here’s a couple of pics of my affirmation card and the full text to help you get started on your own.

My positive affirmation:

I, Kevin Givens, am an intelligent, competent, creative, and enthusiastic person. I am energetic, talented, and confident. I am free from the bonds of procrastination, self-doubt, and the fears of success and failure. I look forward to the challenges that may present themselves. If I happen to fail at something, I will fail fast, so that I may learn from the failure and be more successful tomorrow. I have a successful online business. I only work on one or two major projects at a time, until those projects have started generating income. I am not overwhelmed with all the options and task at hand. Instead, as a proactive individual, I take action each day in the direction of my goals and dreams.

And here are the other resources I promised you to help learn more about positive affirmations.

• Decent wikihow article about How to Use Affirmations Effectively
• Very in depth article (and website) about using positive affirmations to change your life
• A good article with examples of positive affirmations

Share your positive affirmation experiences

In two weeks I’ll follow-up with, My 30 Day Positive Affirmations Experiment Part 2: Days 1-15 Results. If you have a story to share about how positive affirmations have worked (or have not worked) in your own life, please share them here.

I’d love to get some good stories to use in my next two articles. If you have started your own personal experiment with affirmations, post a link and I’ll put the best examples in my follow-up posts.

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