Affirmations are a form of talking to yourself in a positive manner. Tearing yourself down, when you make a mistake, for example, is negative self-talk. The idea here is to replace that negative self-talk with something far better, positive self-talk. Your ability to achieve what you desire will be greatly improved along with you sense of self-worth.

Let’s try this (it’s kind of an affirmation test:) Start by saying, “I like myself” 10 times, in a row, quickly: “I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself…”

What did that do for you? Did it make you feel good? Silly? I picked that one up from one Michael Clouse, who got it from Brian Tracy.

I’ll admit to feeling a bit weird when I first tried it out. How did it make you feel? Most of us aren’t trained to like ourselves. Perhaps unintentionally, we are generally trained not to like or respect ourselves. After all, we know ourselves, right?

Self talk, good or bad, is something we all do. Whether or not anyone is listening we say and think things about ourselves. Our thoughts count, too. Do we treat ourselves like someone we’re trying to encourage? Not many of us.

Generally, we’re not exactly our own cheering section. Now imagine many years of this nonsense, where are we? That’s what we have to reverse. The idea behind positive affirmations is to get us to say things, to ourselves, that are a much more positive and uplifting than what we have been saying. This has endless positive benefits, such as improved self esteem and better results in all the things that we try.

Our lives, and the lives of those around us, can be changed remarkably by the use of positive affirmations. After all, we may tease the person who is always positive, but isn’t it much nicer to be around him (or her) than the one who is always tearing himself/herself, and others, down. Doesn’t it also seem like the positive person not only has more fun, but accomplishes more?

You can go about creating your affirmations, depending on what you need to work on, or you can start with the basics, such as the “I like myself,” above. Other basic affirmations are along the lines of, “I am Happy,” “I am confident,” “I am attractive,” and so on.

There’s a trick, though. If you say them once, they won’t work. Pick one affirmation, just for today, to start, and look in the mirror and say it ten time in a row (Ok, we’re getting tough here. ) Do it in right after you wake up, at some point mid-day, and again when you go to bed. You don’t have to do it with other people around.

The nest step is to keep doing that for a week. See how it makes you feel. If you can keep it up for three weeks it will start to become a habit and you will be feeling a lot better about doing it.