Using affirmations to cultivate a positive mindset, self-esteem and happiness
Do you practice affirmations? Why/why not? Do you feel like they ‘don’t work’? I think they do! I think they can be really helpful meditation tools to support focus. I also often offer an affirmation at the start of the practice that I think will help my students, like, “I am grounded”. AND They can be totally life changing in terms of happiness, self-esteem and positive mindsets.
“I am grounded, in body and mind, in my community and in my soul. I am connected and at peace with my body, my mind and with the universe.”
There are a lot of ways to practice affirmations, with the idea being that you use them to rewrite unhealthy habits deep in our subconscious. I’m not practicing affirmations to get myself something physical, like a cake or a car or $10,000, I’m practicing affirmations to improve my confidence or self-esteem, to change my mindset in some way.
I practice affirmations to improve my self-esteem
Like so many people out there, I have spent so many years feeling uncomfortable in my own body and mind, and yoga has led me away from that. One tool that it has given me are affirmations.
And there’s no better time to start with a brand new affirmation than in the New Year. New Year is a time for renewal and beginnings, why not make yours super meaningful with a new affirmation? Give it a try!
Free workbook for subscribers!
I have created a new workbook to help you find your affirmation and work with it. Download it now by filling in a form on this page or click here! Sneak preview of the workbook below 😉
What going on with Lunar New Year in Vietnam in 2021?
For the fifth time, I am witnessing the change in the year in Vietnam. The first year, we celebrated the Year of the Rooster in Phu Quoc, then the Year of the Dog in Koh Rong in Cambodia, followed by the Year of the Pig in Luang Prabang, and the Year of the Rat in Chiang Mai. Here is tet, Vietnamese New Year, once again with the Year of the Buffalo.
Keeping calm and happy in times of chaos
It’s a crazy and chaotic time in Viet Nam, not just because the festival is mere days away, but because the five-year party congress to elect top officials recently took place in Hanoi too, closing multiple roads at seemingly random times throughout the day (and night!), and causing travel delays all over the place.
THEN coronavirus came back to Vietnam. We’d had yet another long period without any community spread, but it is back. On February 1st, the schools closed again, almost a year to the day of last year’s closures, which lasted for many months. Whole towns have been isolated outside of Hanoi, where the outbreak is the most severe. Small areas have been isolated within the capital as well. We are in limbo. Do we travel, should we travel and will we be allowed to do so?
Should we travel?
I really hope so, I dearly want to visit the sea and feel the sun on my skin and sand under my feet, and breathe clean sea air that is not full of smoke and fumes like everywhere in Hanoi. But we may not be able to go if the airports close to protect their staff or we go back into lockdown. Whatever happens, we have to be able sit with that information and make peace with it.
“What is simply is.”
An exercise in tolerance. Take a deep breath in. Hold it. Repeat in your mind: What is simply is. Let the breath go. Hold it. Repeat in your mind: What is simply is. Then try to sit in stillness and meditative contemplation for 30 seconds, one or two minutes. Focus on your breath, feel the fullness of each inhale and the emptiness of each exhale.
We can set affirmations that work to align our goals to our mindset, similar to how intentions do. We can repeat them time and time again, in the moment we wake up, in the moment before we sleep, after our asana practice; in every situation when our subconscious are malleable and susceptible to change.
Affirmations prepare our minds to be stable, so when we are faced with external instability, we are able to manage it better. Greater stability inside leading to greater tolerance, acceptance and happiness outside.
How do you practice affirmations for self-esteem? Be consistent
Practice at the same time every day. Maybe that’s the second when you wake up, maybe it’s after your yoga asana practice or some other kind of movement like running, maybe it’s when you wake yourself up from Savasana. Be consistent. If it’s at 7.50am just before you start work, do it then everyday. Your brain is so smart, it needs consistency to change it from one way of thinking to another. When we wake up first thing in the morning and just after Savasana is when our minds are most susceptible to new ideas and change. Use those moments to plant something positive in yours.
“Happiness is not what you have, what you do or what you achieve. Happiness is a state of mind.” Robert Mack
I’ve been listening to some great lectures by Robert Mack on happiness and changing our states of mind, and this really resonated with me. It’s not what you have, the shoes you wear or the motorbike you ride, happiness is a state of mind and one YOU can cultivate! Just one way of doing that is through positive affirmations for self-esteem and happiness.
Wherever we end up for this year’s tet, we will be happy, we will be peaceful, we will be full of love.
Namaste
Lolli xxx
There are more workbooks like this one! Check out my workbook for gratitude here, for intentions here or sign up for all three using the form below!
