Positive affirmations are often promoted in the self-help community as a tool that can stop negative self-talk in its track and boost your self-esteem.

The problem with negative self-talk is that if you repeat anything long enough you begin to believe it. So if we’re able to believe the bad things we repeat to ourselves, can we Jedi mind trick ourselves into believing positive things instead? 

With that in mind, I began to wonder, If I force myself into a daily practice of repeating positive catchphrases out loud over and over again before work, will it change my mindset and improve my performance? Is it really that simple?

Well, yes and no. 

Do Positive Affirmations Work?

The research on the effectiveness of positive affirmations shows that telling ourselves that we’re awesome over and over again or ignoring the issues in our lives to focus on “positive vibes only” is not helpful.

It turns out that simply inserting positive thoughts into your head won’t magically make you feel good. In fact, it can make you feel worst when you are stuck in a negative loop and can’t see how you could possibly become this unrealistic positive person from the affirmation.

Affirmations have a proven potential to be useful when they are paired with real work and focus on your values and the effort that you can generate towards improvements rather than unrealistic results. They must be used as a springboard for the first step toward tangible actions that will create real change in our lives.

In other words, you need to believe the thing you are repeating to yourself to be true.

If you were once an athlete but you’ve let yourself slip, repeating “I’ve done this before, I know that I can pull through and get back in shape” to pull you through a difficult week of training can be really helpful. You aren’t making things up, you’re just reminding yourself of what you’re capable of.

If you are depressed and hate your life, saying “I’m awesome and special and deserve to be happy” 150 times per day, unfortunately, won’t have the same effect. When you are engulfed in the darkness and can’t will yourself out of bed in the morning, that statement just doesn’t feel real.

Affirmations can be one tool in the kit that helps you get through something hard in the right context. It isn’t the revolutionary practice that will change your life on its own.

My Daily Work Affirmation Practice

If I somehow met my 20-year-old self and told him that he should compose a daily work affirmation and copy it by hand each morning to get himself hyped up for the workday, he would have laughed me out of the room.

I don’t take easily to vague “Woo woo” self-help practices. I don’t believe that if you simply visualize what you want from life it will magically manifest for you without deliberate action. The idea of using daily affirmations initially sounded to me like a gateway to healing crystals and believing in “The Secret”.

I wrote my work affirmation in a moment of quiet desperation. It was the first wave of the pandemic and the company I work for had to quickly pivot to remote work overnight. I had just started my first engineering project as a project manager. It was too much new stuff all at once and I really struggled to get the job done properly.

As much as I despised my usual hour-long commute to the office, the physical change of space between home and work helped to get me in the right headspace to perform as expected when I eventually reached my desk. I would put on the office uniform, get on the train and start to think about what the day would hold.

Being around a bunch of people that are all doing the same type of work, even if we aren’t necessarily working together directly, also had a big impact on my mood and productivity. The feeling of being part of a team that shares the daily grind of a consulting firm gives me a certain push when I feel like slacking off.

I’ve been in a lifelong battle with procrastination. It’s one of my top five flaws. This struggle to get to work on the important tasks that aren’t particularly exciting was amplified big time during the transition to work from home. I was in a new role that put me outside of my comfort zone and it became way too easy to access fun distractions instead of grinding through difficult learning stages that come with a new challenge.

This led me to some failures on the projects that were under my responsibility. That in itself is not completely unexpected, engineering projects aren’t always perfect. I often joke and say “if there were no hard problems there would be no engineers”. The bigger issue was that I took these project failures personally. I felt helpless and could see the first patterns of a downward spiral develop. 

I felt like I wasn’t cut out for the job I’d coveted for years and finally had the opportunity to do. I felt that my character flaws were beating out my skills and work ethic. I was down and if I didn’t change something I would soon be out.

What I needed was a kick in the ass. I needed a way to get myself into the right headspace before starting the workday without the commute to work. I needed to change my negative inner dialogue so that I could turn the ship around and start to perform like I was truly capable of.

I can’t speak for anyone other than myself, but having a daily routine of repeating a positive affirmation to get me out of my slump was really helpful. I composed my daily work affirmation to reinforce the work ethic that I knew I once had, to remind myself of why I chose to work as an engineer in the first place and what the job means to me.

I think that this affirmation was helpful because I believed what I was saying. Sure, some of the lines are aspirational or maybe a bit ambitious but they all rang true. They didn’t feel phony.

I started each workday by copying this affirmation by had in a notebook before turning on the computer. I don’t follow this practice on a daily basis anymore, but I know that I have it in the tool kit if I ever feel myself slipping again. 

The short text leads with “I love what I do, it’s my dream job.”. Though this doesn’t necessarily ring true every day, I am really in the position at work that I dreamed of having when I first started out in my engineering career. 

I hope that sharing my own affirmation can give you ideas to develop your own. It’s worth a shot if you are in a career slump and need a little something to get you going in the morning.

Daily Work Affirmation

I love what I do, it’s my dream job.

I have all the required attributes to do it well.

I am committed to a deep work environment.

The work we do is important to the community.

This job allows me to live out my dream life.

It teaches me useful skills that have a positive impact on my passion projects.

I am different from my peers, this is an advantage.

It will allow me to make a unique contribution to the team. 

I do not participate in complaining.

I get things done.

WHEN THINGS GO WRONG:

I am allowed a five-minute private pity party.

I will not hide or blame others.

I will take 100% responsibility for my contribution to the problem.

Bad things happen, it’s how you react to them that counts.

I will not beat myself up over them.

I will ask, “How can I learn from this and improve?”

I will remind myself that as long as I give my best effort towards something it doesn’t matter.