One thing that is needed to make it through a challenge that will last a month is an attitude of believing that you can do it, in other words you need to have a can-do attitude! If you walk around thinking or telling yourself that you can’t do it you are setting yourself up for failure, are you not? Of course you are!
The fact that you decided to join the challenge is a good sign that you think you can do it! Or at least that you hope you can, hoping that with the added motivation of others going through it with you and the daily focus activities.
If you listen to your thoughts or your self talk what do you hear? Do you hear belief or doubt? Excitement or discouragement?
The good news is that regardless of what you hear and what you believe right now – you can change your attitude and make it even better! You can believe, you can talk to yourself in a positive manner!
If you don’t even know where to start I can help you with that! You can have positive self talk as soon as you are done reading this post. I have written quite a bit on the topics of affirmations and afformations on this blog and if you do a quick search on both of those you will find a lot of extra ideas if you want more motivation and more tips. I also have a post about moving from negative to positive thinking which can help you change your mindset too.
Affirmations and especially afformations are extremely helpful in changing our mindset and self talk. Affirmations are short positive statements that you say to yourself such as, “I am confident” or “I love my life.” Afformations are short questions that you ask yourself so that your subconscious can seek out the answers that you need. Personally I have found afformations to be a lot more effective.
Sample afformations that you can use for this challenge:
Why do I have everything that I need to build my habit this month?
Why does building this habit become easier each day?
Why am I having so much success with this challenge?
Why do I receive the support that I need?
Why do I enjoy helping others with their habit building?
You may choose to use those afformations yourself, give them a go throughout the day today and see how they help.
Or you might prefer to write out your own afformations based on your personal thought patterns. A good way to do this is to first write down the negative self talk that you find yourself saying and thinking. Then turn each statement or question into a positive question asking yourself why you can do what you want to do. The afformations that you write yourself will probably be even more effective than ones written by someone else.
Remember to keep focused on your can-do attitude especially if you start to feel discouraged or stuck. Keep your afformations written down somewhere that you can see them easily and say them to yourself when needed.
Please discuss if you have already run into any resistance in the course of building your habit? What do you think about using afformations or affirmations?
To Your Success,
Hi Stacy,
Amazing, really. Life follows an internal dialog, and we choose the words. Powerful!
Spot on post here because your energy and thoughts really do precede your reality. Be high energy. Learn to smile, laugh, and dance. Begin repeating phrases to yourself over and over, until you embody the phrases.
Affirmations and afformations work so darn well, if you simply work at the statements, remain persistent, and smile while you state the words
Thanks for sharing Stacy!
RB
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[Reply]
Stacy Reply:
January 4th, 2012 at 3:21 pm
Hi Ryan,
It really is amazing the power of the words that we speak to ourselves!
Thoughts become things!
Thanks for stopping by,
Stacy
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Good points Stacy. Habits are easy to break and hard to form. Usually if you can keep something up for 30 days, you’re gold.
Something simple like getting up 30 minutes earlier, do it in small increments and you’ll be surprised and how easy it become.
Have a great 2012.
[Reply]
Stacy Reply:
January 4th, 2012 at 3:24 pm
Thank you, Jeff! I agree with small increments, that makes it much easier to attain! So often going cold-turkey leads only to failure because it’s such a shock to our systems!
Happy new year!
Stacy
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Thanks for the thoughts, Stacy. I’m generally a positive person but every now and then that negative self talk sneaks in and starts to undermine and erode confidence and dedication. If I don’t recognize it and snuff it out it quickly devours the positive thoughts stopping progess in it’s tracks. It’s good to have some tools in the handbag to deal with the negativity when it weasels it’s way in.
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Stacy Reply:
January 4th, 2012 at 3:26 pm
Hi Carol,
Negative self talk truly does work that way! I think we all fall victim to it from time to time but our ability to fight it with the tools we have is what can prevent it from going any further!
Stacy
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Great post Stacy. I’m adopting a ‘I can and will do attitude’ to my challenge habit and so far so good.
I find I am telling myself I need to push on with my writing (my habit), no matter what happens throughout the day. I know if I get that task done then I am one step up that mountain to success.
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[Reply]
Stacy Reply:
January 4th, 2012 at 3:27 pm
Thank you, Mena! It sounds like you are using your self talk for your advantage! Keep up the great work and you’ll be better for it at the end of this month!
Stacy
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Hi Stacy
This is a great post and as we embark on the personal development journey, we start to realize the importance and pay more attention to the inner dialogue going in our heads all day long. Our thoughts is where it all starts and as we look back on our lives, we come to realize we often had a pretty crappy dialogue running most of our lives, based on our limiting beliefs and tendency to run on auto-pilot among other things. Change your thoughts and you change your world as it has been said!
Kelli Cooper invites you to read… You Are Not Your Thoughts and Feelings
[Reply]
Stacy Reply:
January 5th, 2012 at 8:32 am
Hi Kelli,
You’re right, realizing the importance of our thoughts is a very important first step on personal development! So often we taught to believe that we can’t control the thoughts that come into our head. But once we start to work on our thoughts we can really change our lives! It’s amazing!
Stacy
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Afformations? Really? At first I thought you had made a spelling mistake.
I have never heard of those before, but I like them!
I do use positive affirmations every day. I think they are a great way to turn your mental attitude around and allow you to focus on why you CAN accomplish or finish what you set out to do for the day.
I’ve been working on not putting out negative words, sounds, gestures into the world – only positive words, sounds, gestures. I find that positive affirmations and not giving my negative thoughts any more weight by verbalizing them really helps with my positive can-do attitude.
Kari
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[Reply]
Stacy Reply:
January 10th, 2012 at 10:09 am
A lot of people think that afformations is a typo! They are wonderful tool and I have found they really help my mindset in ways that affirmations never have – and I’ve loved affirmations since I started them!
It sounds like you have a great mindset! Thanks for sharing!
Stacy
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I love your graphics, Stacy. The tigers in the water and the stairway up the forested mountain knocked my socks off. Do you pay for graphics? Free source? Stunning!
Astro Gremlin@ super humor invites you to read… How to Be a Superhero
[Reply]
Stacy Reply:
January 10th, 2012 at 10:29 am
Thanks! I usually use Creative Commons free photos. I put the image sources at the bottom of each post.
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Astro Gremlin from humor about wealth Reply:
January 14th, 2012 at 7:03 pm
I tried Creative Commons for my latest post (in the ComLuv link below) and went kind of crazy with the images. A terrific resource! I’m still a little confused about how WordPress handles the URL links. I got the first image to link back to Creative Commons, but on others, I put the links in manually and WordPress took them out!
Astro Gremlin@humor about wealth invites you to read… How to Be an Eccentric Billionaire
[Reply]
Stacy Reply:
January 15th, 2012 at 10:12 am
I am using a plugin called PhotoDropper which makes the process really easy. It automatically inserts all the codes and links to the image. Give it a try!
Stacy
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Astro Gremlin from silly nonsense Reply:
January 15th, 2012 at 3:39 pm
Stacy, this is a terrific plugin. The photo credit is a little prominent, but it’s worth it to make sure I’m giving photographers their due. I just used it on my latest post – can’t get it to come up in ComLuv for some reason . . .
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Stacy Reply:
January 15th, 2012 at 3:55 pm
One thing that I do is to move the credit to the bottom of my post and then I change the size to 9. It’s still readable but doesn’t scream for attention either.
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These affirmations come just in time for me. I am starting to feel flustered trying to come up with content on a daily basis. Not because I don’t have idea, but because it can start to feel draining.
One other habit I have started is writing down three things I am grateful for everyday. This comes from positive psychology and has shown be effective for increase how positive you feel.
http://youtu.be/ZOGAp9dw8Ac
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[Reply]
Stacy Reply:
January 10th, 2012 at 10:42 am
Hi Susan,
I’m glad that they came at the right time! Were they what you needed to regain your inspiration? I know that it can get draining at times to write a lot. Another idea is to journal or write something completely off topic to get your mind on another topic to become refreshed when you go back to being on topic.
Stacy
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