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https://selspace.ca/modules/self-social-awareness/self-social-awareness-high-school/positive-and-negative-self-talk-high-school/

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Positive and Negative Self Talk High School - SELspace

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Home " Modules " Self & Social Awareness " Self & Social Awareness High School " Positive and Negative Self Talk High School

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https://www.verywellmind.com/negative-self-talk-and-how-it-affects-us-4161304#:~:text=Focusing%20on%20negative%20thoughts%20may,tend%20to%20be%20more%20stressed.

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We all have an inner critic. At times this little voice can actually be helpful and keep us motivated toward goals-like when it reminds us that what we're about to eat isn't healthy or what we're about to do may not be wise. However, this voice can often be more harmful than helpful, particularly when it gets into the realm of excessive negativity. This is known as negative self-talk, and it can really bring us down.

Negative self-talk is something that most of us experience from time to time, and it comes in many forms. It also creates significant stress, not only to us but to those around us if we're not careful. Here's what you need to know about negative self-talk and its effects on your body, your mind, your life, and your loved ones.

What Is Negative Self-Talk?

Negative self-talk can take many forms. It can sound grounded ("I'm not good at this, so I should avoid attempting it for my own personal safety," for example) or it's downright mean ("I can never do anything right!"). It may seem like a realistic appraisal of a situation ("I got a C on this test. I guess I'm not good at math."), only to devolve into a fear-based fantasy ("I'll never be able to go to a good college").

The musings of your inner critic may sound a lot like a critical parent or friend from your past. It can follow the path of typical cognitive distortions: catastrophizing, blaming, and the like.

Basically, negative self-talk is any inner dialogue you have with yourself that may be limiting your ability to believe in yourself and your own abilities, and to reach your potential. It is any thought that diminishes your ability to make positive changes in your life or your confidence in yourself to do so. So negative self-talk can not only be stressful, but it can really stunt your success.

Consequences of Negative Self-Talk

Negative self-talk can affect us in some pretty damaging ways. One large-scale study found that rumination and self-blame over negative events were linked to an increased risk of mental health problems.﻿﻿

Focusing on negative thoughts may lead to decreased motivation as well as greater feelings of helplessness. This type of critical inner dialogue has even been linked to depression, so it's definitely something to fix.

Negative self-talk can lead to a lowered ability to see opportunities, as well as a decreased tendency to capitalize on these opportunities. This means that the heightened sense of stress comes from both the perception and the changes in behavior that come from it. Other consequences of negative self-talk can include:

Limited thinking:The more you tell yourself you can't do something, the more you believe it.

Perfectionism: You begin to really believe that "great" isn't as good as "perfect," and that perfection is actually attainable. In contrast, mere high achievers tend to do better than their perfectionistic counterparts because they are generally less stressed and are happy with a job well done. They don't pick it apart and try to zero in on what could have been better.

Feelings of depression: Some research has shown that negative self-talk can lead to an exacerbation of feelings of depression.﻿﻿ If left unchecked, this could be quite damaging.

Relationship challenges: Whether the constant self-criticism makes you seem needy and insecure or you turn your negative self-talk into more general negative habits that bother others, a lack of communication and even a "playful" amount of criticism can take a toll.​

One of the most obvious drawbacks of negative self-talk is that it's not positive. This sounds simplistic, but research has shown that positive self-talk is a great predictor of success.﻿﻿

For example, one study on athletes compared four different types of self-talk (instructional, motivational, positive, and negative) and found that positive self-talk was the greatest predictor of success.﻿﻿ People didn't need to remind themselves how to do something as much as they needed to tell themselves that they are doing something great and that others notice it as well.

How to Minimize Negative Self-Talk

There are many ways to reduce the self-talk in your daily life. Different strategies work better for different people, so try a few on and see which ones are most effective for you.

Catch Your Critic

Learn to notice when you're being self-critical so you can begin to stop. For example, notice when you say things to yourself that you wouldn't say to a good friend or a child.

Remember That Thoughts and Feelings Aren't Always Reality

Thinking negative things about yourself may feel like astute observations, but your thoughts and feelings about yourself can definitely not be considered accurate information. Your thoughts can be skewed like everyone else's, subject to biases and the influence of your moods.

Give Your Inner Critic a Nickname

There was once a "Saturday Night Live" character known as Debbie Downer. She would find the negative in any situation. If your inner critic has this dubious skill as well, you can tell yourself, "Debbie Downer is doing her thing again."

When you think of your inner critic as a force outside of yourself and even give it a goofy nickname, it's not only more easy to realize that you don't have to agree, but it becomes less threatening and more easy to see how ridiculous some of your critical thoughts can be.

Contain Your Negativity

If you find yourself engaging in negative self-talk, it helps to contain the damage that a critical inner voice can cause by only allowing it to criticize certain things in your life, or be negative for only an hour in your day. This puts a limit on how much negativity can come from the situation.

Change Negativity to Neutrality

When engaging in negative self-talk, you may be able to catch yourself, but it can sometimes be difficult to force yourself to stop a train of thought in its tracks. It's often far easier to change the intensity of your language. "I can't stand this" becomes, "This is challenging." "I hate..." becomes, "I don't like..." and even, "I don't prefer..." When your self-talk uses more gentle language, much of its negative power is muted as well.

Cross-Examine Your Inner Critic

One of the damaging aspects of negative self-talk is that it often goes unchallenged. After all, if it's going on in your head, others may not be aware of what you're saying and thus can't tell you how wrong you are.

It's far better to catch your negative self-talk and ask yourself how true it is. The vast majority of negative self-talk is an exaggeration, and calling yourself on this can help to take away its damaging influence.

Think Like a Friend

When our inner critic is at its worst, it can sound like our worst enemy. Often we'll say things to ourselves in our heads that we'd never say to a friend. Why not reverse this and-when you catch yourself speaking negatively in your head-make it a point to imagine yourself saying this to a treasured friend.

If you know you wouldn't say it this way, think of how you'd share your thoughts with a good friend or what you'd like a good friend to say to you. This is a great way to shift your self-talk in general.

Shift Your Perspective

Sometimes looking at things in the long term can help you to realize that you may be placing too great an emphasis on something. For example, you may ask yourself if something you're upset by will really matter in five years or even one.

Another way to shift perspective is to imagine that you are panning out and looking at your problems from a great distance. Even thinking of the world as a globe and of yourself as a tiny, tiny person on this globe can remind you that most of your worries aren't as big as they seem. This can often minimize the negativity, fear, and urgency in negative self-talk.

Say It Aloud

Sometimes when you catch yourself thinking negative thoughts in your mind, simply saying them aloud can help. Telling a trusted friend what you're thinking about can often lead to a good laugh and shine a light on how ridiculous some of our negative self-talk can be. Other times, it can at least bring support.

Even saying some negative self-talk phrases around under your breath can remind you how unreasonable and unrealistic they sound. This will remind you to give yourself a break.

Stop That Thought

For some, simply stopping negative thoughts in their tracks can be helpful. This is known as "thought-stopping" and can take the form of snapping a rubber band on your wrist, visualizing a stop sign, or simply changing to another thought when a negative one enters your mind. This can be helpful with repetitive or extremely critical thoughts like, "I'm no good," or, "I'll never be able to do this," for example.

Replace the Bad With Some Good

This is one of the best routes to combating negative self-talk: Replace it with something better. Take a negative thought and change it to something encouraging that's also accurate.

Repeat until you find yourself needing to do it less and less often. This works well with most bad habits: replacing unhealthy food with healthy food, for example. It's a great way to develop a more positive way of thinking about yourself and about life.

Get Advice From The Verywell Mind Podcast

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How to Reduce Negative Self-Talk for a Better Life

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We all have an inner critic. At times this little voice can actually be helpful and keep us motivated toward goals-like when it reminds us that what we're about to eat isn't healthy or what we're about to do may not be wise.

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https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/positive-outlook-learn/#:~:text=A%20recent%20study%20from%20the,such%20as%20a%20student's%20IQ.&text=%E2%80%9CAttitude%20is%20really%20important%2C%E2%80%9D%20said%20lead%20researcher%20Lang%20Chen.

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Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" may have been written as joke, but training our mind to focus on the positive has been proven to have bothphysical and physiological benefits.

Among other things, studies have shown that a positive attitude can help us cope with stress, improve our overall wellbeing, and even boost our immune system. Recently, researchers have also uncovered evidence that a positive attitude can impact our ability to learn and solve problems.

This isn't necessarily surprising considering that positive thinking generally helps us feel happier and more relaxed, which in turn makes it easier to concentrate on tasks at hand and absorb new information. For years, teachers have known that fostering a positive learning environment is crucial to their students' success, and most go to great lengths to ensure that their classrooms are places where students will feel supported and engaged.

Even so, it's fascinating to know that something as simple as a student's outlook on learning can influence their academic achievement. Here's what the research says about how a positive outlook can help us learn more effectively.
What research says about how a positive attitude can help us learn:
A recent study from the Stanford School of Medicine found that a positive attitude towards learning has the potential to boost the functions of the brain's memory centre and predict performance independent of confounding factors such as a student's IQ.

The researchers studied 240 students between the ages of seven to ten to see how their attitude towards a difficult subject like math would affect their ability to solve problems and remember what they'd learned. They also used MRI brain scans to examine the neurological impact of positivity.

It soon became clear that students who had a positive attitude toward math performed better in the subject compared to students with a negative outlook. The brain-imaging results also showed that while students were busy solving math problems, their positive-attitude scores correlated with activation in the hippocampus, which is an important memory and learning centre in the brain.

"Attitude is really important," said lead researcher Lang Chen. "Based on our data, the unique contribution of positive attitude to math achievement is as large as the contribution from IQ."

The researchers explain that positivity towards learning manifests itself in a number of ways. For example, students who were positive about math tended to be more interested in it and were also more likely to practice it, and this positive perception towards math and their abilities resulted in enhanced memory and more efficient problem-solving.

Of course, a positive attitude is no guarantee for success, but it could improve academic performance for students who struggle with certain subjects.

"We think the relationship between positive attitude and math achievement is mutual, bi-directional," explained Chen. "A good attitude opens the door to high achievement, which means you then have a better attitude, getting you into a good circle of learning. And it can probably go the other way and be a vicious circle, too."

Teachers can also use these findings to help students meet their full potential. Previous research has shown that in order to learn effectively, students must feel safe, engaged, and connected, so these are all factors that can contribute towards a positive learning environment.

Tips for maintaining a positive attitude towards learning

Despite its potential benefits, maintaining a positive attitude toward learning is often easier said than done, because learning is by its very nature difficult and even frustrating at times.

When learning seems particularly difficult, it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and feel like you're not making progress. With this in mind, here are a few tips for maintaining a positive attitude towards learning even when the going gets tough.

1. Set and track your own learning goals

Setting clear learning goals or objectives and then tracking your progress towards them is one of the best ways to boost motivation and increase achievement. Research shows that goal setting is empowering, and it's been shown to enhance self-regulation and improve persistence and performance in numerous settings, from the classroom to the workplace.

Once you've set some specific and realistic goals, you can break them up into smaller steps. This not only helps you stay organised, but also allows you to see your progress more clearly, which can help you maintain a positive outlook as you work towards your bigger goals.

2. Manage your stress

It can be difficult to maintain a positive attitude towards your learning when you're feeling stressed or anxious, because research shows that anxiety causes us to focus disproportionally on negative stimuli. Stress can also have an impact on the brain's ability to process and retain new information.

So with this in mind, it's important to find effective ways to manage and cope with stress. Getting organised is one very effective way of managing anxiety, because it gives you a feeling of empowerment and helps you view new situations as exciting rather than stressful. But if stress is getting in the way of your learning, check out these ten tips for managing your learning anxiety.

3. Stay open to new ideas and approaches

Most of us are naturally resistant to change, because with change comes uncertainty. Research has found that people have a reliable and tangible preference for things that have been around longer, and a 2010 study showed that students preferred a course requirement described as the status quo over a newer version, even if the newer version meant less coursework.

Of course, it's natural to feel somewhat resistant to change, because it requires us to step out of our usual routine and can initially make us feel like we're losing control. But making an effort to stay open minded can help you maintain a positive outlook towards your learning. Research even shows that open-mindedness can increase learning through examination of prior beliefs, decisions, and mistakes.

So what can you do to become more open-minded? Start by making an effort to get out of your comfort zone by putting yourself in new situations or exposing yourself to a variety of new ideas and approaches. This could involve anything from listening to new types of music to making sure you expose yourself to points of view that differ from your own.

4. Visualise a positive outcome

Visualising your success from the get-go can help you stay positive, as research shows that visualisation exercises can improve optimism. So if you're struggling to feel positive about your learning, try to set the stage for success by visualising your desired outcome.
Think about how it will feel to reach the goals you've set for yourself and remind yourself why it matters; maybe completing your course will enable you to ask for a raise or work in your preferred area. Whatever the case may be, reminding yourself of the rewards to come will help you stay positive and even get excited about your learning.

5. Learn from your mistakes

Mistakes are not only inevitable, but are actually necessary in order to learn. Once you recognise the value of making mistakes, you'll be able to use those mistakes to progress and develop rather than worrying that you're failing every time something goes wrong.

So it's important to reframe your mistakes as opportunities to learn. If you've answered a question incorrectly or come to the wrong conclusion, simply acknowledge that a mistake was made and then look at what went wrong and how you can prevent it from happening again in the future.

Once you're able to view mistakes in this way, you won't feel as frustrated when things don't initially turn out the way you expected. If you want to know more about how to learn from your mistakes and stay positive as you do, check out this piece on how to fail intelligently.

Marianne Stenger is a London-based freelance writer and journalist with extensive experience covering all things learning and development. She's particularly interested in the psychology of learning and how technology is changing the way we learn. Her articles have been featured by the likes of ABC Education, The Huffington Post, Lifehacker, and Psych Central. Follow her on Twitter @MarianneStenger.

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How Maintaining a Positive Outlook Can Help Us Learn

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Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" may have been written as joke, but training our mind to focus on the positive has been proven to have bothphysical and physiological benefits. Among other things, studies have shown that a positive attitude can help us cope with stress, improve our overall wellbeing, and even boost our immune system.

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https://glowingup.co.za/how-daily-affirmations-changed-my-life/

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How Daily Affirmations changed my life ~ Glowing Up

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" I visualize my dream life and watch as it manifests into reality". I saw this quote on Pinterest and it truly resonated with me. If there is one thing you should know about me, it's that I am a daily affirmations convert.

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Positive Affirmations in a School Enviroment Lead to a Successful Classroom

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Positive Affirmations in a School Enviroment Lead to a Successful Classroom

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https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/16/12/accentuate-positive

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The Research

In a recent study, Pittinsky, who teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, tested whether positive attitudes of predominantly white teachers could augment the learning outcomes of mostly minority students. The results suggest that simply being welcoming and inclusive can help students not only feel comfortable in school, but also grow academically.

The study looked at more than 1,200 teachers in predominantly minority schools in 14 states across the country. Of them, 80 percent were white and the rest nearly all Latino or African American.

It examined two characteristics of welcoming interactions: what Pittinsky calls "empathic joy," or the happiness that comes from taking the perspective of another person, and "allophilia," a term he coined as an antonym to prejudice, meaning "love or like of the other."

To determine teachers' levels of empathy and allophilia, the researchers asked them to rate their agreement to statements such as "When my students celebrate things, I am happy for them" and "In general, I have positive attitudes about my students." The researchers then measured these scores alongside assessments of the teachers' positive engagement with their students, and against end-of-year tests measuring students' academic growth.

The results? A chain of good effects.

Teachers' empathic joy was associated with allophilia. Allophilia, in turn, was associated with positive engagements between students and teachers, which were then associated with greater student learning. The research suggests that these positive interactions can make students more optimistic at school and more committed to continuing their education.

Microaffirmations in the Classroom

Many teachers already recognize and promote positive interactions - microaffirmations - in their classrooms, though perhaps without fully realizing its measurable impact. In a recent Phi Delta Kappan article, Pittinsky gives several examples:

Nodding and making eye contact with students while they're talking

Making sure to call on students of different races and genders equally

Referring to every student by his or her name

Using inclusive language - for instance, talk about "families" instead of "parents"

Openly giving praise for a wide-range of actions, from answering a question right to sitting still during a lesson

Staying enthusiastic when interacting with students

"Focusing on microaffirmations can create a virtuous cycle," writes Pittinsky. "Over time, they can redefine the normative behavior in a classroom - or in a school - not only to avoid exclusion and insult, but also to embrace inclusion and affirmation."

Small Behaviors - Big Impact

This study also suggests that education could benefit from a more comprehensive focus on how behaviors both big and small impact students and schools. Teachers, school leaders, and researchers could look at how a wide-range of microbehaviors impact students, and the various forms these small actions can take.

"Instead of narrowly focusing on slights and insults," Pittinsky writes, "we should be looking at the whole spectrum of microbehaviors and finding ways to promote the ones that can help us best educate diverse K-12 students." And there's no reason for educators and researchers to stop with the latest findings. It's possible, says Pittinsky, that there is more good news to be discovered about microaffirmations, and more to learn in general about how small behaviors affect student achievement.

Reimagining Empathy

Finally, this study reimagines empathy, deliberately putting it in a new light. We tend to focus on "empathic sorrow," or the negative feelings that come along with recognizing the pain or misfortune of someone else. But Pittinsky's work shows that empathic joy is also a powerful tool in aligning disparate groups of people and in creating feelings of success. "Interestingly," he notes, "in other research on empathic joy, we observed an important trend: The teachers who felt the most empathic joy were the ones who were reporting lower levels of burnout."

This new emphasis on empathic joy makes it possible for schools to use empathy not only to boost student achievement, but also to reframe lessons in history and civics on the importance of kindness and mutual understanding in fostering constructive solutions.

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In a recent study, Pittinsky, who teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, tested whether positive attitudes of predominantly white teachers could augment the learning outcomes of mostly minority students. The results suggest that simply being welcoming and inclusive can help students not only feel comfortable in school, but also grow academically.

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How positive affimations effect your brain

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How positive affimations effect your brain

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Every minute of every day, your body is physically changing in response to the thoughts that run through your head. Just thinking about something causes your brain to send signals and release neurotransmitters. These chemicals control virtually all of your body's functions, including your mood and feelings. Over time and with repetition, via neuroplasticity, it's been proven that your thoughts change your brain, your cells, and even your genes.

For example, when people practice gratitude, they get a surge of rewarding neurotransmitters, like dopamine and norepinephrine, and experience a general uplift of the mind. In his book, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science, Norman Doidge tells of an experiment in which two groups exercised a finger muscle for four weeks. One group, which actually moved their fingers, increased muscle strength by 30 percent. The other group, who just visualized moving their fingers, increased muscle strength by 22 percent.

What you think, visualize, and say to yourself can change your body, brain, and life. One way to harness this power to help you is through affirmations. Studies suggest that positive affirmations can help us respond in a less defensive and resistant way when presented with life challenges. They are a mental health tool that can help you develop a healthy sense of self and build a more resilient brain.

What Is an Affirmation?

Affirmations, also called self-affirmations, are thoughts you intentionally come up with to support, encourage, and calm your brain and body. They can be positive statements used to challenge negative, depressing, or anxiety-producing thoughts and beliefs. They can also just be general supportive thoughts providing encouragement. Affirmations can be used to influence your thinking patterns, behavioral habits, health, and moods.

Your mind thinks in pictures to accompany words. The words in an affirmation, automatically and involuntarily, bring up related mental images. That's why affirmations and visualization work well together. You can intentionally combine them for a powerful tool, but you don't have to.

Affirmations Activate the Brain's Reward Centers

One study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to show that affirmations activate the reward centers of the brain. These areas, specifically the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, are the same reward centers that respond to other pleasurable experiences, such as eating your favorite food or winning a prize. Your brain's reward system can be quite powerful. For example, research shows that the reward circuits can decrease pain and help you maintain balance when stressed.

The study also discovered that saying affirmations increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate. These areas of the brain are connected to self-related processing. Science shows that increased self-related processing can act as a kind of emotional buffer to painful, negative, or threatening information.

The study also offered exciting new insight into the use of future-oriented affirmations. In each of the brain regions identified, the effects of self-affirmation were stronger when participants were given future-based prompts. For example, the statement "Think about a time in the future when you will experience career success," created more self-affirming brain activity than "Think about your past career success." Hence, doing self-affirmations in a future-oriented way gives the practice an extraboost.

Proven Benefits of Affirmations

Various scientific studies suggest that positive self-affirmation practices can be beneficial in many ways:

1. Studies show that self-affirmations can decrease health-deteriorating stress.

2. People have successfully increased their physical activity levels using self-affirmations in experiments.

3. Affirmations have been shown to help people perceive "threatening" messages with less resistance. These results suggest that people can apply self-affirmation as a tool for coping with everyday challenges.

4. Research shows that they can make a person less likely to dismiss harmful health messages. People were more likely to respond with the intention to change for the better.

5. Students, who were contending with negative stereotypes in school because of their race, gender, or generational status, boosted their academic achievements in college using affirmations.

6. Practicing self-affirmation has effectively lowered stress and rumination, both of which contribute to depression and anxiety.

7. Affirmations can significantly increase feelings of hopefulness.

8. In one study, a short affirmation exercise boosted the problem-solving abilities of "chronically stressed" subjects to the same level as those with low stress.

9. Affirmations have been used to successfully treat people with low self-esteem, depression, and other mental health conditions.

10. Evidence suggests that affirmations can help you perform better at work. According to researchers, spending just a few minutes thinking about your best qualities before a high-pressure meeting can calm your nerves, increase your confidence, and improve your chances of a successful outcome.

How to Use Affirmations

You can use affirmations in any situation where you'd like to see a positive change take place in your life. This might include when you want to:

Raise your confidence before an important event or meeting.

Diminish negative feelings such as anxiety, anger, or impatience.

Increase your self-esteem.

Find the motivation to keep going.

Improve your level of productivity.

Quit a bad habit.

Affirmations may be more effective when you pair them with other positive thinking and goal-setting techniques. For instance, as said above, affirmations work particularly well with visualizations. The power of affirmations lies in repeating them to yourself regularly and as needed. It's useful to say them throughout your day, for example, when you engage in negative or anxious thoughts or find yourself in challenging emotional situations. While practicing affirmations, you will want to take slow, relaxing breaths. As you are aware of your breath in and out, focus on the affirmation and the feelings accompanying it. Enrich and internalize the experience.

Examples of Affirmations

Your affirmations are going to be unique to you and specific to the things you want to achieve, change, or address. The following examples can be adapted to fit your needs.

Affirmations to Help Relieve Anxiety

When you have anxiety, it's important to deescalate anxiety-producing thought patterns rather than grow and encourage them. Affirmations can help. They can be used at any time, any place. Here's a list of 72 positive affirmations that can be used for reassuring yourself. Here are a few examples:

1. I am liberating myself from fear, judgment, and doubt.

2. I choose to help myself with my thoughts.

3. My anxiety does not control my life.

4. I can handle this.

5. I am safe. There is no imminent danger.

6. This is not a crisis. I do not need to panic.

7. This is just one moment in time.

8. I'm not going to be scared by a feeling.

9. All I have to figure out is the next step.

10. This is for now not forever.

Affirmations for Depression

As with anxiety, depression can be made worse by negative thinking habits, such as overgeneralization and cognitive distortions. Affirmations can help you change your thinking patterns and perspective by acknowledging and focusing on more positive aspects of ourselves and our lives. Here are some examples you can adapt for your own use.

1. You are valued even when you're not productive.

2. Despite your sadness. you are loved.

3. You are not sick because of a lack of effort or failure at adjusting faulty thoughts.

4. Your brain is your friend (despite what you hear)

5. You are appreciated even when you can't contribute much.

6. Even though you feel worthless, you are needed.

7. You are separate from your depression.

8. You are much more than your opinions of yourself.

9. Your discomfort won't last forever.

10. You are okay where you are right now.

Use Your Thoughts to Help You

You have much the power to influence your physical and mental states. You have to use that power for your good. Your body expresses your mind, right down to the genetic level, and the more you improve your mental habits, the more beneficial the response you'll get from your body. You can't control what has happened in the past, which shaped the brain you have today, programmed your cells, and caused certain genes to switch on. But, you can influence today and the future. You have the power in this moment and going forward to choose your perspective and behavior, which will change your brain, cells, and genes.

You might consider affirmations to be unrealistic "wishful thinking." But try looking at positive affirmations this way: many of us do repetitive exercises to improve our physical health, and affirmations are like exercises for our mind and outlook. These positive mental repetitions can reprogram your thinking patterns. Over time and with repetition, you can begin to think and act differently. It's really just about becoming aware of and changing the way you talk to yourself.

You talk to yourself all the time anyway. Why not use this to help you?

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The Neuroscience of How Affirmations Help Your Mental Health - The Best Brain Possible

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Every minute of every day, your body is physically changing in response to the thoughts that run through your head. Just thinking about something causes your brain to send signals and release neurotransmitters. These chemicals control virtually all of your body's functions, including your mood and feelings.