Affirmations make Holidays great and happy holiday greetings are in the air. There are ways to overcome conditioned reflexes from past holidays and personality conflicts. Do you cringe hearing those words? Or do you experience feelings like, “I can’t wait to see Mary!” By changing your holiday story and creating new positive associations, you can have a great holiday season.
Affirmations You Can Practice
The closer the holidays get the more relaxed I am.This year I will embrace the love I feel for people.This holiday I will enjoy more with the people around me.Every holiday dish I prepare is filled with love.I relax more and more with holiday gatherings now.This year can be different.
Holiday sayings bring up memories. How we respond to the holiday season tells us what we have conditioned ourselves to believe from past experiences. The sights, sounds, and smells of the season can bring up memories very quickly. We respond to them before we know what happened.
Take a few minutes and read the holiday sayings below and see where your hot buttons are:
Jingle all the Way Merry Christmas Happy Hanukkah Happy Kwanzaa Silent Night, Holy Night I will have another hot toddy Tom and Jerry make the Holidays better The ringing of the Salvation Army bells Black Friday is rapidly approaching Cyber Monday
A Short History of Affirmations
In the 1870s, Emile Coue, a French psychologist, and pharmacist used a positive statement (affirmations) in his now-famous statement, “Every day in every way I am getting better and better”. His clinic was making five times more improvement and recovery, from the simple affirmations he used. His methods were ignored or ridiculed, but his results were not.
Emile Coue is known as the Father of Applied Conditioning and introduced new methods of healing, recovery, and self-improvement. He believed that concentrated attention on an idea over-and-over again spontaneously tends to realize itself. That’s where “Every day…” came in. He found that remedies given with positive suggestions worked better than remedies alone.
Affirmations or positive statements need several things to work effectively: Use present tense, be personal and be positive, the simpler the affirmation, the better. Just like jingles, your mind remembers affirmations easily. Jingles use music or a melody. Your brain loves that. Examples: Things so go better with Coke We are the World Awesome Zoom Zoom Look Ma, no cavities Snap, Crackle, Pop Nestle’s makes the very best Chocolate From the land of sky, blue waters Where’s the beef?
Chunking – Small Bits of Information
“Five seconds of informational bits” is what science today calls “Chunking”. This is how the mind processes information. By using how the brain naturally gathers and sorts information chunking enhances the overall effectiveness of the process.
Memory recall improves as we engage and connect with the affirmation. The more you use your senses of you see it, taste it, feel it, smell it, and hear it, the better. The more you make affirmations real and alive to you, you become what you are affirming faster. An old saying, “Fake it, until you make it” – in truth you become it. Affirmations help you attain the qualities you want. Practicing, envisioning and acting the part until it becomes a part of you is the key.
At the point of becoming a habit, people experience improvements in better communication, happier relationships, and more satisfaction in life. People begin to relate to you in a more positive manner.
The affirmation went from a conscious learning process to a habit. Once a habit, we can use affirmations as part of our everyday life.
Written and Oral Affirmations
There are several ways to use affirmations, written or oral. Feel or imagine the affirmations – really use your five senses and engage them.
Written Affirmations: Writing down the affirmations daily for a few minutes keeps you in the present. If you find resistance with some of them, see if it is unresolved hurt from past. Do you want or need an apology? Give it then, it is for you to release the trapped energy that holds you to them and the situation. You can begin to be more in the present and enjoy life more, just by releasing negative energy.
Oral Affirmations: Saying your affirmation out loud in the morning and during your drive will help. Saying holiday affirmations out loud and in front of a mirror increases the effectiveness of the affirmation. Seeing how we are delivering our affirmation, our facial expressions, tone of voice, and our body language is valuable information about how people receive what we say. Good news – you can change it if needed.
How to use Affirmations
Must be in Present Tense
Personal
Be Positive
Positive examples:
Each day I am calmer and calmer. It is good to enjoy the season right now. I now see aunt, mom sister, dad, or other, with more compassion.
Take one of these above affirmations and use it daily.
Release those negative feelings Overcoming the negative feelings we have about the holidays and the people we have around us at this time, can be challenging. Think over your own list about the holidays. As you review your negative thoughts, you may find that they extend to everyday situations as well. Examples:
She’s a pain in the neck. He never stops talking. Oh great! He’s drunk again. Wonderful, she/he is criticizing them again. Wow, your only an hour late for dinner. Oh! the family is coming for Christmas dinner. Get the Febreze and Tide pens! I better starting cleaning to be ready, its only September 15th. I never get what I want. I live in a crappy place and drive a crappy car. Everything always goes wrong for me.
Resistance If you find resistance, can you release the past hurts? If not, write about the situations, then burn it. Replace these negative ones with more positive ones. Now that you have burned the old affirmations, write or say the new positive ones.
Examples: I love these people more and more. I am confident I will enjoy this holiday. My home is filled with good thoughts and beauty.
See yourself enjoying the spirit of the holidays and every day, more and more. Make your holiday story more enjoyable this year and every year. Start Now.
We would love to hear your stories.
Reprinted with permission by Darielle (Dariel Roskie Archer)