To be completely honest, I have always been skeptical about affirmations. I wanted some type of scientific backing that affirmations actually affect you positively before I was willing to try them out. But then I learned something interesting.
Positive affirmations empower us to withstand situations we view as threatening to us. Saying, “Penny, you are brilliant. Penny, you are wonderful. Penny, you are loved.” won’t make me feel happy all the time. However, it helps me keep my eyes open to the world around me (instead of the criticism forcing me into tunnel vision), which helps me remain objective and keep things in perspective. It also reduces defensiveness in me when confronted with personal criticism.
Remember when you were in love, and someone thought you were wonderful? Remember how you kind of floated through life, and little things didn’t bother you? I believe that the positive affirmation you received from your beloved acted as a buffer between you and negative events and words. The good news is that you don’t need anyone else to give you the affirmation – you can do it yourself and achieve the same thing.
Experiencing negative feedback in our lives is a given. It will probably occur every day in one form or another. It will happen even if we do something correctly or for the right reason, because people normally respond to how your actions or words positively or negatively affect them, not really according to how or why you did or said something. When we are threatened, our biological response is to focus solely on the threat facing us. We lose consciousness of everything else around us. Unfortunately, I have experienced this up close and personal before, as I bet you have as well.
In one incident, I worked in an office and was really pretty happy there. I kept to myself and stayed busy. But one girl in the office decided to be mad at me for some unknown reason, and made some comment that made her displeasure evident. I was flabbergasted that she was mad at me since I kept to myself in my little corner of the office.
What could I have done so wrong to make her so upset? I took it as a criticism against myself and the way I conducted myself, especially since I always did everything I could to avoid it. All of this occurred in an instant.
The next thing I know is that I’m out of my seat, following her through the office, repeating loudly to her retreating figure, “Why are you mad at me? What did I do?” The door to my boss’ office opens and he asks me to remember that this is a business office and to be quieter. I had gone on automatic pilot, and I was like a heat-seeking missile going after my threat.
I forgot that I was in a place of business and that everyone else around me could see and hear me. That is because my laser attention to the person I perceived as a threat made me forget where I was and who was around me. After my boss interrupted my pursuit, I took a breath and the surroundings faded back in, like a camera pulling slowly away from a close-up, only to show all the people around staring at me. Ugh!
Experimenters created 2 groups, those who spoke positive affirmations to themselves, and those who did not. They administered to the groups a fake personality test and gave them results that showed overwhelming negative characteristics. Those who had not said the affirmations couldn’t sit through all the negative comments about themselves. However, those who had said the affirmations were able to continue reviewing what the test said because they were less defensive about the criticisms. The affirmations reduced the emotional effect of the negative comments.
I used to be unable to hang around one particular person, because you never knew when that person would decide to make a cutting comment. I avoided that person like the plague, because it hurt so badly, and I just wanted to either hurt them back, or run away, and neither action was appropriate for the situation. During that period of my life, I was still under the influence of a long-held belief that there was something irreparably wrong with me that no one could name or fix. Therefore, every negative comment toward me slashed right through me like a saber, causing horrible pain, mainly due to the fear that what they were saying might be right because I was such a human reject.
But after I dealt with that lie and discovered that there is nothing irreparably wrong with me, and that I was pretty much just like everyone else, with good and bad qualities, and changed my personal narrative to include those truths, negative comments stopped hurting so much. I could withstand a lot more of them before they started to truly bother me because I knew there was nothing horribly wrong with me, and told myself that I was a successful, intelligent, capable, loving and talented woman of God. I was able to be around that person more without feeling the need to cut back or flee.
So if you want to protect yourself from the debilitating emotional backlash caused by negative events that occur every day, start speaking positive biblical statements about yourself. Just as the shield of faith in the armor of God extinguishes the fiery darts of the enemy, speaking aloud statements of faith regarding who God says you are will help protect you from attacks of criticism and negative circumstances. Be proactive and try speaking all of the things that are RIGHT with you, remembering to call yourself by name.
RESET ASSIGNMENT:
- Think of someone that you normally avoid because they have a habit of hurting your feelings. Use them as your testing ground. Spend a week speaking biblical positive affirmations to yourself at least once a day, calling yourself by name. Then spend time with that person. Were you able to deal with their criticism any better?
- Try different affirmations. Which ones are you drawn to the most? Ask yourself why those minister to you as others do not. Use it as a marker to show where you have experienced hurt in your past and need healing. Pray and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the source and start using the RESET process to work through it.