As I enter a time in my life where my long terms goals are getting closer and closer and opportunities around me rise, I have found stability in the combination of manifestations and creating affirmations. Affirmations are quite infinite and can be specific or general, however the more specific the better. They can be created by first, understanding what kinds of goals you are wanting to achieve. These may be short-term or long-term goals, and even more specifically, they may be personal growth goals, relationship goals, financial goals, work goals, and so on. Or, your affirmations may be as simple as a consistent morning and night routine, what you want to do that day, or how you want this week to go. No matter the affirmation, these are a few simple but effective ways to begin to use these affirmations to positively influence your life:

1) adapting a POSITIVE growth mindset

If I have learned anything on my wellness journey, it is that mindset is everything. Now you may have been told this before, and while it sounds quite cliche, I never understood the power of my own mindset until I began to put more effort into trusting the motivation and sort of safe place it gives me. Having a positive mindset is not simply about becoming a ‘say yes to everything’ kind of person or being constantly happy or joyful. It is inevitable for you to feel defeat, fear, and negativity (there is no avoiding that), but having such a mindset is a tool to use to re-center yourself and remind yourself of what it is you want to achieve. Rather than avoiding negativity altogether, this kind of mindset helps you to remove limiting thoughts (whenever they may come) that will work against your manifestations, your positive energy, your motivation, and so on. In practicing utilizing such a unique way of thinking, it slowly becomes easier to process negativity and let it pass through you. I would even consider this a form of mediation in itself, and it takes practice, commitment, and effort. Not only do you gain more faith in yourself as a person and what you can accomplish, but you may also begin to form somewhat of an impenetrable bubble around yourself and your goals.

2) create affirmations that suit your LONG-TERM goals

While having a positive growth mindset is the key to keeping your beliefs and motivations alive, you will need something to apply this mindset to. Creating affirmations, well at first, was not too easy for me, and now, I could sit and write several out at a time. The reason for that was due to the fact that I was an over-thinker, someone who thought a bit too big. The more specific, and the smaller my desires were, the easier it was for me to begin manifesting. Rather than “I will get my degree”, my affirmations began to look something like, “I am in charge of the life I live, the choices I make, and to the extent that I take care of myself” or “I am a capable, strong, women who trust their abilities and believes in who they are as a person”.

Listen to yourself. Depending on what my mind and soul need at that moment in my life, whether that is more support in one area than another, I may write some morning affirmations to simply help me through each day, or some at night to ease my mind before sleeping. Other times, I will focus more on some long-term affirmations. It all depends on where you are, and everyone is somewhere different, no one’s affirmations will look the same, as we are all unique to ourselves and where we are in our lives.

3) find creative ways to surround yourself with your affirmations

Now this is where I get extremely creative…it is important to understand that manifesting is repetitive. However, the reality is, who has time to sit down and read a number of affirmations written over and over again, this is quite time-consuming and not exactly the most effective way either. In my opinion, the hardest part about manifesting your affirmations is the fact that the only way I was able to reach a deep understanding of what I wanted, and how much I wanted them, was in the lowest, darkest, and hardest times in my life, I had to choose them over the dark thoughts, the fear of judgment, sudden unrealistic fears, the list could go on. But I had to place belief in them…words written down on a piece of paper. Easier said than done. However, after doing so, on the other side, there are feelings of enlightenment and pride in your bravery, and to me, that’s worth winning every battle. Surrounding yourself with your own words gives you the potential to use them to your advantage and to break through those tough moments, and the more you do, the stronger your mind and beliefs become. I do so in small ways, whether setting my iPhone Lock Screen to a new wallpaper containing the affirmations I want to focus my energy on that month, whether they are the same each month or slightly altered to fit a new phase of my life. Either way, I can always remind myself where I can filter my energy too.

4) make consistent efforts

Affirmations are not a shortcut to success; that was a mistake I made initially. Words on paper, in all the power they potentially have, are still at the end of the day, words on paper. ‘Potential’ is the key that I had ignored. The change I began to see in my life due to my affirmations was not because those words had magically improved my life themselves, those changes were the results of me putting those affirmations into effect through my actions and decisions. Whether or not your affirmation is a long-term or short-term goal, break it down into steps for yourself. My biggest recommendation is not to go from zero to one hundred. Start small and work little by little. Small steps are the key to consistency.