Hi Danny!

Personally, I’m not a fan of affirmations so I’ll discuss the subject of failure.

I think it varies. It’s important to be aware of realistic threats. Obviously, it’s not great to lose a substantial amount of money or go bankrupt. It happens, but people try and avoid it.

At the same time, for people who experience catastrophising, fear is often exaggerated. Not every situation you encounter is going to end in a worst case scenario. Frequently experiences end more positively than anticipated. As you know fear can lead us to avoid certain situations. Perhaps this means that you are refusing opportunities and positive experiences out of fear? Truly, the only way to overcome a fear of failure is to do what you are afraid of.

As an adult tutor, I’ve learned that anxiety and failure is part of the process of learning for adults. When you are new and experiencing something for the first time often, people make mistakes. Then we can learn from our mistakes and do something successfully.

Negative self-talk is often the root cause behind catastrophising and fear of failure. Perhaps it might be beneficial to practice writing about yourself positively. Can you do this while thinking about your dreams, goals and considering next steps on how to achieve them?

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by Helcat.

Given that the best player in baseball strikes out a LOT of the time (any  sport stats people out there?), failure is actually a naturally occurring part of success (not all seeds germinate, almost all sperm don’t fertilize anything!). And if practice makes perfect (or at least better), it’s useful for us to try, learn from what didn’t work, and try again.

So rather than label things failures, how about “Every time I try, I either succeed or learn something to make success more likely in the future.”

I’m not a fan of affirmations, as often they just create unrealistic pressure within our minds.

It’s like people saying always be positive……well, that isn’t normal, as by doing that, we don’t deal with our emotions and work through them.

Lowering our expectations is a good place to start to retrain the mind to live in reality.

By this I mean, train the mind to be prepared for anything to happen, be it good, or not so good, because if we always expect the best to happen every time we do something, then when, and if things don’t turn out the way we thought, our emotions take hold in a negative way, because we didn’t prepare in the first place to accept reality.

Learn to accept what will be, will be, and stop being so hard on ourselves by trying to always be perfect.

Dear Danny:

“Affirmations…  work for me in the sense of grounding me and reminding me of who I am, and what I am capable of” – I am glad that affirmations work for you. They work for many people. I remember a time when I felt very good repeating positive affirmations, I felt elated, wonderful. Problem was that I needed serious psychotherapy at the time and positive affirmations were not enough to place me on the path of healing. But I can see their helpfulness in producing positive motivating feelings.

You listed your affirmations. For them to work for you, they need to consist of your own words; they need to be personal to you. And so, it will be wrong for me (or for anyone commenting on your affirmations) to sort of … edit them. Your affirmations are yours, not mine, they need to sound good to you, not to me; not to anyone else but you.

I read all your affirmations. I can see that what you seek is to become (the following are all your chosen adjectives which I placed in alphabetic order): assertive, assured, authentic, beautiful, blessed, calm, capable, charming, cheerful, committed, confident, disciplined, free, friendly, fun, good enough, handsome, happy, healthiest, intelligent, kind, loving, lucky, peaceful, positive, powerful, purposeful, quick learner, real, relaxed, sexy, smiley, unique, warm, wonderful, worthy.

All your adjectives and affirmations sound fine to me!

I noticed you started a new thread with the same affirmations. I hope that other members reply to you there. You are welcome to post again here, there or elsewhere.

anita

How are your affirmations working for you, Danny?

anita