If you’re a person of a certain age, you may remember Stewart (Stuart?) Smalley, a character played by Al Franken, on Saturday Night Live back in the 1990s.

I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And doggone, people like me.

This was, I think, my first exposure to the idea of “affirmations”; the practice of trying to condition yourself to reframe negative thinking with positive words.

I thought it was silly.

I’ve heard about affirmations and “the power of positive thinking,” and “manifesting” and all of that. It always seemed like a way of creatively lying to yourself. I always thought that it worked for people because of the whole “if you repeat a lie long enough eventually you believe it.” Maybe that is part of it, still. I don’t know.

For the past month or so, I’ve been working through an online program that functions like a self-driven workshop around improving self-image and guided healing. I share stuff from it with my therapist sometimes, and we’ll discuss it in our sessions. I’ve found it to be very helpful. I don’t want this to seem like a testimonial because it’s not about the product, but I’m happy to say which it is if you contact me directly.

About 1 or 2 weeks ago, they introduced the idea of “affirmations” (internal groan from me), but suggest listening to these pre-recorded affirmation loops and guided visualization. I had a drive for a while so I put one on.

…Huh… 🤔

So each information has a reminder box underneath it that has:

Listening to affirmations can feel awkward at first—that’s okay. (…) If an affirmation is hard to connect with, reflect on why that statement may be hard for you to believe. (…)

The latter point was one I had not really considered before. “[R]eflect on why” that statement might be hard for you to believe.” Using the affirmations as an introspective mirror. Hmm. I appreciated the permission to just start by listening to them – saying them aloud still feels like a bit much. Eventually, the process guides you to repeat them during the recording, and then eventually speaking them to yourself in the mirror.

I’m definitely not ready for that, quite yet.

What I have noticed, myself, is that even just listening to someone else speak the affirmations, in first-person (“I am …”), I respond differently to different statements! Sometimes my inner voice is silent. Other times it will raise its eyebrow. Other times it will say “now wait just a second, there.”

Consider these three statements:

1. I am smart and capable.
2. I deserve to be loved.
3. The future ahead of me will be bright and satisfying.

Read them in your head, read them aloud, heck, read them at a mirror if you’re feeling plucky.

Do they all feel equal? (If so, congrats on being well-adjusted) Do any feel a little harder to assert, like you’re either an impostor saying it or you just full-on disagree?

The site later provided a “big list of affirmations”, in text format.

Up to this point, I had been journaling my responses to the prompts. I took the list of affirmations the site provided and copied them into my journal. Then I went through each one and I put an emoji at the beginning of the line.

• 🔴 I disagree / don’t accept / struggle with this statement
• 🟡 I feel resistance to / conditionally agree with this statement
• 🟢 I agree with / accept this statement

My list looked like this (I used colored hearts because of reasons) in one of the sections.

Two things:

1. I was glad to see that there is a fair amount of spread across the three classifications
2. This feels like something that can be ✨processed✨

➡️ The goal here is get this whole list to be green.

To the earlier point, now that these are written down like this, I can both practice with the ones I agree with and slowly introduce the ones that are more challenging. I have some ideas about how to split it, but that’s unimportant. With them also being written down, I can now also read them and enumerate the thoughts that immediately come up to me.

I am still not comfortable saying them aloud, I think. One of the affirmations is something to the effect of “I deserve to take up space and to be seen” and that’s one that is a 🟡 for me, so maybe that’s part of it.

I’ve been listening to the affirmations and visualizations daily for the last 10 days or so. I don’t know that I can specify exactly how or how much it’s affected me, I can tell that it is helping.

I still think they’re a little bit silly, though.