Daily Affirmations

Each day upon waking, I listen to my body and mind to decipher what they are trying to tell me. Is there a pain in my body that needs to be acknowledged? Is there a thought that comes as soon as I awake. I use what I feel and hear to create my affirmation for the day.

To affirm means to declare positively something is true. An affirmation is a positive statement asserting that the goal the thinker wishes to achieve is already happening. Affirmations are effective tools for training your thoughts and feelings regarding what you desire to experience in your life; they are an important part of your Spiritual Practice. Using a seed/soil/plant analogy, your affirmations are your seed thought, placed into the creative medium (soil), in which they are nurtured and from which the form (plan) of your life experiences are created.

There are five universal affirmations defined by Emma Curtis Hopkins, known as the teacher of teachers in the New Thought Movement. These affirmations are also called spiritual mind treatments:

My Good is my God. My God is Life, Truth, Love, Substance, Intelligence — omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent.
In God I live and move and have my being.
I am Spirit, Mind, Wisdom, Strength, Wholeness.
The I AM works inevitably through me to will and to do that which ought to be done by me.
I am governed by the law of God and cannot sin or fear sin, sickness or death.

As part of my spiritual practice, I repeat a set of affirmations throughout the day as a form of active meditation. The words can be repeated while I shower, walk down the street, fold the clothes or any other task which does not require complete concentration. Repeating the affirmation has the multiple benefit of reducing my heart rate and calming my mind due to the meditative state which occurs. If practiced regularly, it will also change the tone of my inner critic. That voice that constantly reminds me of my mistakes or insecurities will become less and less frequent. It may never go away, but with practice I will have control to stop the negative thoughts once they begin.

Day 1

I am health.

I am wealth.

I am abundance.

I am enough.

Day 2

I am health.

I am wealth.

I am deeply loved.

Day 3

I am health.

I am wealth.

I am whole.

I am forgiven.

Affirmations can be simple or complex. If you are a beginner like me, it’s best to keep your affirmations to one sentence that you can remember and repeat over and over. This must be something that rings true to you when it is said. I’m new to expressing myself spiritually, so my affirmations are very simple. Here are some that I repeated over the past two days:

On day five, my affirmation became more detailed:

I am wealth.
I am health.
I have a voice and I have been healed.
My soul is forgiven and I have forgiven others.
Life is rich.
God is gracious.
I am grateful for my awareness and oneness with God.

What’s key to the exercise is being clear on what you want to manifest in your life. The subconscious is not only the storehouse of everything internalized by you, but it is the maker of your condition. We act in ways to prove our subconscious beliefs because it is our nature to seek truth. It was Descartes who said, “I think therefore I am”. Shape your thoughts to reflect your ideal self. Do not put energy towards repeating your flaws or mistakes. The brain will automatically take up that role. Your role is to be commander of your mind.

As part of my Foundations class at Bodhi Spiritual Center, I have made affirmations a daily part of my spiritual practice. The Foundations of the Science of Mind class workbook offers the following tips:

Put your affirmation in places where you can easily see it to remind you to keep it in your thought.
Repeat it often, speaking enthusiastically and powerfully, with feeling. Do this at least 3 times per day, when you wake up, mid-day and when you go to sleep.
Write your affirmation out repeatedly in your journal.
Record the affirmation and play it back to yourself while doing activities around the house, driving, or going to sleep.
Visualize yourself in the experience that the affirmation describes, feeling the feelings, seeing what your world looks like around you. Actually be in your body experiencing your body, seeing with your eyes and feeling with your feelings! The stronger the felt experience the greater the message placed into the action of spirit.

As part of my day-long retreat for Foundations class at Bodhi Spiritual center, we reviewed the 5 steps of affirmative prayer also known as spiritual mind treatment. During this process, we identified God values which arose within us. We also made a list of ways we currently describe ourselves. Here’s mine.

At the end of this, we each developed an affirmation statement. My first version was as follows:

I am a creative being embodying peace, wholeness, harmony and well-being. My full potential is being realized through an ideal job which allows me to grow and share with creative expression and grace.

The class members practiced their affirmations several times by walking around the class and repeating it to others. Each time I repeated the affirmation, I took note of how it felt. Did it feel authentic? Did it resonate with my soul? Was I speaking truth to what I really want? After refining the statement, I have the following: