Welcome to The Mom on Purpose Podcast. I'm Lara Johnson, and I'm here to teach you how to get out of your funk, be in a better mood, claim more with your kids. Manage your home better, get your to-do list done and live your life on purpose with my proven method. This is possible for you, and I'll show you how. You're not alone anymore.
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Hello, so good to have you back today on The Mom on Purpose Podcast. I am your host, Lara Johnson, and we are going to start by sharing a funny story with you.
I've been thinking a lot about affirmations, and I was exploring in my own mind my first memories of what like when I learned about affirmations when I was 18 years old, maybe 19 years old, and I had started selling Mary Kay cosmetics.
I am a very introverted person, especially back then. It was very challenging for me, and it was like a physically painful process to talk to strangers Very different than who I am right now. I still don't love talking to strangers, but it's a very different experience than when I was 18, or 19 years old, and as part of the kit that I had when I signed up to sell Mary Kay cosmetics was there a CD from Mary Kay, and it was like an inspirational self-help type CD. I had never listened to self-help before that time, And I loved that CD.
I don't even know how many times I listened to it over and over and over. And she talked. There were some amazing lessons that she talked about. I could have left, you know, I could have come and gone with the cosmetics, but what she talked about in that CD has stayed with me for I don't even know how many years you know 20 years since then but that was my first introduction to what an affirmation was and what I thought was. That an affirmation was. You could just say something that you thought, or you wanted what happened, and then it would happen. So, like, hey, that's cool, let's try it. So, I had this like three-by-five card. It was blue, and you have to know that, like I was very insecure about my legs, horribly insecure I've always been very curvy.
I've always had more curves in my legs, even when I was younger, I think I went from child's clothes into women's clothes. The second my hips came in. They've always been there, And I was always really embarrassed by this because my figure looked very different than a lot of my friends, I now own my figure and my curves, but at the time that was very challenging for me. So, I got my blue three-by-five card and I wrote my very first affirmation ever on it. I have beautiful, thin, skinny legs. I was like, hey if I can write anything about the first thing I'm going to write, not, I want a million dollars. Like, let's get clear. That showed you how insecure I was about my body, And I seriously took that.
Three either were other things. I don't remember what the other things were, but I remember that one I kept in my car, and every time I was working full time and every time I was driving to work, I was like chanting this to myself as I'm driving. Well, at one point I had to take my car to the mechanic, and I remember thinking, oh, just grab me, grab my three-by-five card. It's kind of embarrassing, I don't want anybody to see that. And guess what? I didn't. I forgot it was sitting right on the passenger seat of my car and I was mortified because, guarantee, he saw all my affirmations about my beautiful thin, skinny legs. I will tell you right now that I have learned so much about affirmations since that time, as well as owning my beautiful legs, just how they are.
But that's where I wanted to use that as just a funny story to kind of introduce today's topic, which is how to make affirmations work for you and why some affirmations don't work. So that's where I wanted to start because I have heard all different languages about what an affirmation is, and how to make it work. I've looked at it like you need to hustle to achieve whatever you want. There. You should have spiritual intentions.
It's up to the universe and whatever it feels like it should bring to you. I've looked at it like it's all up to me to create this. It's only God's will, you can only do God's will, and there is so much confusing messaging around affirmations, manifestation, all of it. And as I've studied it and pondered it and prayed about it and gotten clear on it for myself, I hope that what I share with you resonates so that it can bring a lot of clarity for you. So, in this episode, we are going to focus on affirmations. At some other future time, we will talk about manifesting, because it's something that I love to talk about and am so passionate about. So, let's start with our game …
· This episode is for you if you have ever read, or regularly say, some kind of mantra that someone else has made for you. Maybe you read it in a book somewhere, maybe it was something you heard on a podcast and you're like, huh, that sounds good, and you just started repeating it for yourself.
· Or you also know this episode is for you is if you think an affirmation is like a magic wish like your wish is my command, whatever you say it will be. Or if the affirmation you have sounds really flowery, like it's not in your own voice but it's almost like a more formal version of yourself that you're trying to present in this beautiful, creative piece to your English teacher. Okay, we're using a lot of alliteration and descriptive words.
· You'll also know that this episode is for you is if you think affirmations will fix your problems, or that it will stop problems from happening, or if you're confused about how God's will fit into your affirmations.
So, let's first start with what I believe are the three most common mistakes on why affirmations don't work for someone. And to be clear, I have done all of these and so if, as I'm going through these, you recognize this for yourself, that's okay. I just and I'll explain why I believe these don't work. So, the first one is you set an affirmation well beyond what you believe. Now, a really common phrase that I hear in the body positivity space is the phrase I love my body. Now that can be a great thought for some people.
A lot of the women that I coach, that thought, that affirmation is well beyond what they believed because they have a very long history of not liking their bodies. So then to suddenly jump to I love my body, it's like your brain is always discrediting. Every single time you say that your brain is like, subconsciously, rejecting that thought over and over, and then it will start collecting evidence as to why it should be rejecting it. Like you'll walk by a mirror and you're like I love my body, I love my body. And you walk by a mirror and you're like Oh, these pants look horrible on my butt. You're like this is squeezing my mommy pooch in this awful way. Or you're looking at pictures and instead of enjoying the moment of the picture, you're like zooming in on your phone to like I different parts of your body. Okay, that is your brain rejecting what that affirmation is because it's too big of a jump for your brain to believe it. So that's the first mistake.
The second mistake is if you are saying or repeating an affirmation to get you out of some kind of negative emotion and if it just doesn't sound like you, okay. So, here's an example I have my life is a beautiful gift, full of joyful moments every day, all day. Like we don't talk like that, okay, again, we're not writing this English paper for your teacher to try and get a good grade, so you're using a bunch of descriptive words and making it try it like you're not. Yeah, it just doesn't work, okay. So, let's go back and look at that. Let's say you're having a really hard time and you start repeating this mantra. What you're trying to do is take whatever negative emotion you're feeling and slap some positivity on it, and that just doesn't work. Your brain will reject that. Your body will reject it.
Now I work with a lot of really mentally strong women, and most are not new to the self-help industry. They have studied a lot; they have processed a lot, and this is one of the biggest problems that I see. I am just as guilty of this, and you'll know that you do this, because you will feel a lot of how do I, how do I want to say this?
Your body will feel icky Very slightly, and the moment you give space for that ickiness, it can kind of freak you out because you'll realize that's only the surface and there's a lot more that you're feeling underneath the surface that you haven't processed. It's probably because you've slapped a lot of positive thoughts that you need to skim off first before you can see the emotions you're feeling. Those emotions aren't going to stay forever unless you keep slapping positivity on top of it. Your job is to bring those negative emotions out, not make it mean anything about who you are as an individual and give yourself a chance to process those emotions.
Okay, so that's the second one is if you're trying to get out of a negative emotion and if you and you think, if you keep repeating this, this mantra, or this affirmation, that all the hard things in life will magically disappear. So, the last mistake that I see a lot is if you are saying some kind of affirmation to control others. Now, control is a very heatedly debated word.
I want you just to step back for a second and look at this with neutrality, and by neutrality, I mean you're not activated emotionally by this word control. We all do this. We all want things to go our way. We want our kids to get good grades, we want our kids to be obedient and do their chores. We want these things. But if we are spending more time with an affirmation to create that result, then we are on getting clear and connected with our kids and our loved ones on how we can guide them, and how can we lead them versus I'm going to say this positive sounding thought and hope it works.
So, here's an example my kids are thriving at school. Now that can be a great-sounding affirmation, but it's not going to work. It's not going to fix your kids' grades. It's not going to fix your kids' friends' fights or their tardiness or whatever challenge that you have. Your brain is going to reject it because affirmations are not meant to control other people. They're meant to help you reframe and help you grow and stretch, not control. Okay, so those are the three common mistakes that I see when working with clients and those are the reasons why I believe they don't work.
Now, what I believe about affirmations is that they are there to stretch the belief of our brains. It's not to discredit our human experience. Now, when we're looking at this, it's important to realize that as we're stretching our brains, we are always embracing our humanists, which means sometimes there are valuable lessons that we need to learn in life. Sometimes there are emotions that we need to process, there are some things that we need to take away, and I've seen a lot of people think that their affirmations quote-unquote don't work if something is still really hard. But affirmations like that are your brain discrediting any hard thing and thinking affirmations are going to make your life easy, and that's not the case. So, let's go to how do you make affirmations work for you.
Now, when I'm thinking about affirmations, I think of this in terms of a ladder. Now, there's the different rungs on a ladder and when someone says an affirmation that's beyond their belief system, it's like the next rung of the ladder is so high up that they can't even jump to get to that next rung of the ladder. Versus, when you are making affirmations for yourself, what you're doing is you're bringing that rung of the ladder just outside of reach, so you're just stretching to where you can reach it and then start climbing up. So, the first thing that you want to do to make affirmations work for you is I want you to find. What do you believe currently? Okay, so, whatever that is.
Now, when I was thinking about this with my bodywork, I love that my body was that rung that was like so far out of reach. But what I do like are my eyes. I love my eyes. I think I have this unique eye color. That is something that I do believe is that I have a unique eye color. So, what's just beyond that? That's what I currently believe. But just beyond that I liked when I was doing this work for myself is I liked the shape of my body. Now, I was uncomfortable with parts of my body, but I started to own that I was curvy, that I always will be curvy. I have always had hips. So, for me, that was that 1% beyond of, I could really embrace the shape of my body, and that's where I started to slowly start to ease up that ladder, taking 1% shift at a time.
Okay, so the first step, going back to that, is what do you believe? And what is the 1% beyond that? So, the best way to find that next 1% is to and this is your second step on how to make affirmations work for you That's, to brainstorm lots of different thoughts and perspectives.
So, if you think about some dice you know in like a game of Yahtzee or you know whatever game that is, where you have a dice that you're rolling. If you had never seen all the different sides of that dice, your brain would automatically assume that there was only one black dot on every single side of those. But when you turn the dice, you realize, oh no, the site has two black dots. This site has three black dots, and so on. It's the same kind of thing when you're looking at what you do believe Your brain has created that as a fact, but it's just a belief. Now I want you to start brainstorming what are all the different sides of that dice, and it's a really fun game to be able to do this for yourself when you're looking at all different thoughts and perspectives.
Now, when you're going through this, there will be lots of thoughts and lots of perspectives that you don't like. That's okay. The whole point is just to see it differently. Once you start getting all of these different perspectives, then you get to try these thoughts on.
Okay, so let's go back to the body example and what I've seen with my clients. Okay, so when they're looking at, like I love my body, that's too big of a jump. They may find something that they do believe. For me, it was my eyes, you know. For another client, it was her hair. She has really beautiful hair and she loves her hair.
Okay, so then she starts thinking about okay, what's the next shift beyond that? And the next shift was it's possible to lose weight. That was another perspective. It's possible to love my body without losing weight. Another perspective was my body is completely healthy as it is, and another perspective was my body is unhealthy.
So, you see how like they sound so counterintuitive. But they are just perspectives, they are just thoughts to try on, and the more thoughts that you can brainstorm and create, the more or the easier it will be to find affirmations that do work for you.
Okay, so with this client, for example, what she started to get is a whole bunch of different thoughts, and then we sat together, and she got to try these thoughts on, just like you would try clothes on, so she would read the thought, she'd close her eyes and she would see how her body felt with it.
And it's so cool to see that everybody's body will accept or reject a thought, and the more you get in tune with the thoughts that your body will accept or reject, the easier and the better the affirmations will be for you, and one thought can sound amazing to one person and the next person can reject it. That's why it's important to do this step of trying your thoughts on
Okay. So, for her, she was able to close her eyes with all of these thoughts I read these thoughts back to her and what was cool is that what she found was that the thoughts that resonated most with her were the ones that were in her voice. They weren't the thoughts I came up with her, they were the ones that weren't flowery. It was in her voice, and it was like I'm trying to remember what the exact thought was, but it was like I like moving my body like that's what it was. My body likes to move, and I like moving it like it was so simple, but that was the next 1%. Like she couldn't talk about exercise, she couldn't talk about weight loss. It was like I just like moving my body and my body likes to move, and it was so cool because then, as she went throughout the rest of the week, that was her only focus. That was the only thing that mattered to her was that she liked moving her body and her body liked to move. So that's just an example of an affirmation that can really work for you.
You've got to be able to think about what you currently believe and then start brainstorming lots of different thoughts and perspectives. Then you start trying all of those thoughts on and creating it, so it sounds like you. Now this is like the next level of development, and it can be really challenging to do this on your own. If this is brand new for you, I would love to help you through this process. I'm going to make this really simple for you.
If you scroll down to the show notes, there is a link there where you can schedule a free consultation. I love doing these calls because it is a chance for you to start unpacking all of the negative beliefs that you've been having. That sounds really heavy, but honestly, it's like taking this horrible weight you've had on your shoulder and taking it off and resting it for a moment During that time. That's where I will start helping you figure out which of these beliefs are subconsciously hurting you and which ones are helping you, and then we'll start building out beliefs that will stick, affirmations that will work for you so that you can move forward in a healthy, happy, joyful, moral live way. So again, scroll down to the show notes. There is a link that you can click on that to schedule your free consultation. Have a wonderful week, friend.
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