What happens when we intentionally and consistently use affirmations? Big things start to shift! Affirmations help to deprogram harmful thought patterns. You know the ones. The ones that tell you you aren’t worthy, you aren’t enough, you don’t belong. It’s time for those thoughts to go! They aren’t yours.

When we practice using affirmations a shift in our emotions, habits, and thought patterns begin to happen, leading us to live in closer alignment to our true, compassionate selves.

You deserve to feel empowered, worthy, and authentic, and you don’t have to wait around for someone to give it to you! Empower yourself today by using these affirmations. As always, take what you need, leave the rest.

Humans are social creatures, and many of us find comfort in staying connected. When we are deprived of these deep social connections, we have a tendency to feel lonely or isolated. The longer this isolation and loneliness last, the higher our risk is for mental, emotional, and physical problems. Typically, loneliness is a signal to a depressive episode and is seen as an individual problem treated with things like exposure therapy. Now, isolation is a lot more nuanced. Because we are social distancing due to a global pandemic, “treating” loneliness and isolation behaviors takes a little more creativity.

Isolation makes you think that you are the only one, and you’re the only one who’s feeling alone and that’s not true. This is NOT a normal situation, and you’re already handling it – however that looks like for you. As this pandemic continues, we want to give you a few tools for coping with these hard feelings, because you really are not alone in this.

WHY CARDS?

We’ve talked before about how powerful positive affirmations are in our blog post You Are Not Your Appearance. They are used to help us decrease negative self-talk and improve self-esteem. There is even MRI evidence that suggests certain neural pathways are positively activated during self-affirmative tasks. (Cascio et al., 2016) The benefits of affirmations are abundant but how can we use them in our day-to-day life? 

It’s recommended to be consistent when practicing positive affirmations. It’s important to recite them often and biggest of all: believe them! A great way to use affirmations is by creating your own affirmation deck of cards. Conveniently sized, the cards can serve as pocket-book sized reminders of your worth wherever you are. Gift them to friends, leave them on a stranger’s car, or use your whole deck by shuffling them and choosing one card to focus on each day, week, or month.