Table of Contents
Your image of yourself has a big power over your life. If you view yourself negatively, you’ll probably find that you will hold yourself back. If you view yourself in a bright light, your reality will reflect it. You might not love who you are, but this is where positive self-reinforcement can be a handy tool to change your self-perception.
Because you donโt value yourself, you feel worthless. Because you feel worthless, you value yourself less. Being caught in this pit is a universal experience โ one we all experience at times. However, itโs not a place you want to stay as doing so degrades the quality of your life hugely.
Thatโs why itโs important to learn the role of positive self-reinforcement โ to help pry you out of this pit by drilling in healthier ways of viewing oneself.
What Is Positive Self-Reinforcement?
Your reality is a reflection of your self-image because the way you view yourself impacts your perception of life. If you see yourself as a loser, youโre going to carve out a reality thatโs congruent with this identity. Your outer reality wants to have a congruency with your inner reality, as your reality is a projection of your inner workings.
Positive self-reinforcement is to associate desirable traits, characteristics, feelings, and thoughts with yourself which can give you a boost in your quality of life. Think about positive self-reinforcement as reprogramming a faulty system to synchronize with a higher perspective.
The more you associate positive qualities with yourself, the quicker you will begin unconsciously shifting towards these ideals.
The most common barrier holding people back is their perception of themselves because the world mirrors how we think and feel.
Commonly, people experience self-worth issues โ resulting in being stepped on, pushed around, and taken advantage of. But when people flip this perspective, the external reality accommodates this interior shift.
The Antidote to Limiting Belief Systems
Positive self-reinforcement brings you up while negative self-perceptions harm you. Many of these limiting belief systems are unconscious, and you probably donโt recognize when youโre reinforcing something negative about yourself.
The key to stopping reinforcing negative self-perceptions is to identify each time you put yourself down. Here are some things to think about:
- How often do you roast yourself for mucking up?
- Do you beat yourself up for failing?
- Do you believe you should be doing better in life by now, so you resent yourself?
What you associate with yourself can instill motivation, encouragement, and support, but it can also strip you of these things. This is why itโs important to treat yourself as you would treat your pet, your partner, or a family member.
Changing Self-Perception With Positive Self-Reinforcement
Words and phrases anchor ideas. You want to anchor the idea that you are progressing in some way, that youโre going forward rather than backward. If you frequently tell yourself how much life sucks, soon you will believe it because youโre anchoring this idea into your reality.
The technique of positive self-reinforcement is to hijack this phenomenon to improve the way you see yourself โ by reinforcing an image of yourself in a better light.
This is why you should practice anchoring positive and impactful phrases with yourself to reinforce a better idea of yourself. So watch your vocabulary, and be aware of how you think, feel, and speak about yourself.
Write down repeating situations or occurrences where you beat yourself up. If you are constantly reinforcing the belief that life is terrible, then you will continue to move down the path of a terrible life, because it has become your point of focus.
If you think of yourself as a loser, is this going to help you feel good about yourself? Likewise, if you donโt see yourself as someone sociable, is this going to help you improve in that area?
Exercise self-awareness to identify negative self-perceptions, and understand the repercussions of them. Replace these terms by adjusting your vocabulary and associating better ideas with yourself.
Drilling in Positive Perceptions of Yourself
What becomes your point of focus heavily influences your life. You will gravitate towards a self-image corresponding with the traits and characteristics of your focus โ so make sure theyโre good for you!
Think of all the ideas that you associate with yourself. Write them out like this:
- Iโm nobody, I could never be someone that people look up to
- I am awkward and donโt make friends easily
- I fail at everything I do
- Iโm not worthy of respect or admiration
- I should be doing better in life
- Life is difficult
- Itโs scary
- Iโm dumb
Identify whether these ideas bring you up or down, and think of a more positive idea that you can replace with it. For the list above, some examples include:
- People donโt know me well because I havenโt put myself out there
- Iโm working on my social skills
- There are many things Iโve done well in my life
- I am worthy of respect because I am a good person
- Iโm doing the best I can
- Life is a challenge
- Itโs an opportunity to grow
- Iโm learning more every day
Positive Self-Reinforcement Affirmations
Affirmations can be powerful tools to drill in certain ways of thinking about yourself. By affirming characteristics with yourself, you will begin to believe them.
An affirmation is when you repeatedly say a phrase and associate the feelings of that phrase with yourself. The idea of affirmations is to work on your conscious mind by deconditioning old programming that doesnโt serve you, and replacing with it healthier programming that does.
Here are some examples of different affirmations. You can use these, but I suggest making your own that are relevant to what you need to work on.
Affirmations can be worded differently. Experiment with different phrases to see what impacts you the most.
- I am strong
- I choose to be more assertive
- Iโm quite resilient
- I like to challenge myself
- I love the person Iโm becoming
- I am becoming happier
- My life keeps on getting better
- I canโt believe how much work Iโm doing on myself
- Every day I feel a little healthier
- Life is becoming exciting
- Iโm getting funnier every day
- Everyone loves me
- I embrace new ways of doing things
- Iโm interested in trying new things
- Iโve got this!
How to Make Affirmations More Effective
- Feel into it: Itโs important to feel the phrase youโre saying. It should be a feeling that youโre trying to resuscitate, not just words themselves. So associate the phrase with a feeling, and make sure there is meaning behind the words.
- Believe it:ย The best affirmations are the ones you believe. And if you donโt, you make yourself believe them. Have you ever hyped yourself up or reassured yourself by saying something likeย โIโve got thisโย without even realizing it? It just sorta comes out as a habit. Thatโs because itโs genuine, and you believe it. This wonโt always be the case, but try to believe the affirmation.
- Take steps: If you go straight to โIโm powerful beyond measureโ while you still feel weak and insecure, your unconscious mind wonโt make the leap. You need to make steps as a way to bridge the gap between desire and reality. A better path would be to start with โIโm becoming more powerfulโ. Once you feel better about yourself, then go to โIโm powerfulโ.
- Donโt use negative statements: A negative statement is something like โI am not insecureโ. Even though the intent is good, the keyword is counterproductive. Your mind will make an association with that keyword and ignore the rest, so make sure the statement is positive.
- I choose statements: While your unconscious mind can argue what you say you are, it canโt argue by saying that you choose to become someone/something. Try using I choose statements such as โI choose to be more assertiveโ rather than going for โI am assertiveโ.
- Quality over quantity: Take your time to speak each phrase and load it with meaning. Take it slow, savor the feelings. Donโt just rapid-fire because theyโre not going to do much.
Visualize Self-Compassion
Visualize yourself giving yourself love. As your ability to visualize can move things internally, constantly seeing yourself support yourself is a good way to reap the benefits of that support.
What I often do when Iโm feeling down is visualize my higher self coming down and reassuring me. He will tell me that Iโm doing great, and guide me to become more like him.
Letโs say you feel guilty about something. Picture your higher self appearing and telling you that itโs okay. Your higher self can sit with you and reassure you that weโre all human and make mistakes and that you shouldnโt hold onto something that happened.
The more you make a practice of supporting yourself via visualization, the more support youโre going to feel, so definitely give it a try.
