How an Affirmation Practice Can Improve Your Business
Have you ever practiced affirmations? They’re a tool used to shift your mindset and improve the way you think about yourself and the world around you. For me, I’ve found that they’ve had profound effects on my business over the course of time. I’ve honestly been surprised by this revelation because when I started practicing affirmations I didn’t think I’d see any tangible results. That being said, today I’m going to walk you through how I’ve practiced affirmations in relation to my business, how I’ve shifted my practice over the course of time, their effect on my business, and my favorite affirmations for business.
How I’ve Practiced Affirmations Over Time
If you’re a small business owner, you’ll understand what I mean when I say that my personal affirmation practice and business affirmation practice have always been intertwined. As you can probably imagine, being a small business owner means that your business and personal life are really mixed. For me, my personal growth is inherently tied to the growth of my business. The better I am as a person has a direct correlation to the success of the business. With that said, the way I practice affirmations is connected to both my personal growth and my business’ growth.
I started practicing affirmations daily in 2020. I was looking to build a positive morning routine for myself, and thought this would be a good practice to throw into the mix. I liked the idea of setting my day up for success with some positive thoughts that grounded me forward throughout the day. This was a practice that stuck with me for some time and became an integral part of my morning routine for over the next 2 years.
When I started practicing affirmations, it was really straightforward. Another part of my morning routine was journaling and I would finish off my journaling practice each morning by writing down some affirmations. What I did specifically was write down a list of affirmations that felt resonant to me at the time until I filled up a full page in my journal. I usually ended up with anywhere from 10-12 affirmations on a page, creating a strong foundation of messages to guide me forward in a positive way. The affirmations weren’t always the same, and they shifted and changed with each passing day. That is, until about a year into my practice.
How My Affirmation Practice Shifted Over Time
At about the one-year mark of practicing affirmations daily, I started to get, what I would consider, a little robotic with my affirmations. I started repeating the same ones each and every day. I didn’t switch them up. I stuck with the ones that I felt were the most potent and resonant for me to work with. While there is value in this repetition, I noticed stagnation in my practice.
Let’s back up a little though. Affirmations are a very subtle practice. Repetition in affirmations can be valuable because they create space for you to start believing in the statements you are affirming. It allows you time to process the meaning of what you’re saying and train it into your subconscious. The more time you focus on one affirmation over switching to another gives you time to really understand it fully.
When I was first starting to repeat my affirmations, I thought this was a good thing. I thought exactly what I stated above, that repeating the affirmations would give me time to really integrate them and understand them. It would allow me the space to really understand what I was stating and incorporate it into my life. This would allow me to truly gain meaning and understanding from the practice as opposed to simply doing it per-formatively. I saw it as a good thing.
That being said, I kid you not, for about a year I wrote the same 12 affirmations in my notebook each and every day. While repetition in affirmations is inherently a good thing, I don’t necessarily think that practicing with the same ones for a year leads to the best results. I found that, at least for me, my practice became very stagnant after a while. Repeating the same affirmations without giving thought to why I was writing them was not serving me. It made me feel like my practice was a chore as opposed to something that I enjoyed doing.
How My Affirmation Practice Affects My Mindset
As you can probably imagine, after noticing that my affirmation practice was feeling stagnant, I decided to stop doing it. This was at the beginning of 2022, and I was craving change. What I actually decided to do was make my morning routine more fluid, only doing practices that I felt called to on a particular day. For a long time I liked the structure of a morning routine with very specific tasks within it. Now, I was being called to more space, more creative flow and more connection to self in relation to the tasks I was completing in my morning routine each day.
While in theory, this sounds like a good thing, I quickly found that stopping my affirmation practice had a negative impact on my life. Specifically, it had a profound impact on my business and my personal belief in myself in relation to my business.
Let me explain. As I mentioned, it was at the beginning of 2022 that I decided that I no longer wanted to write affirmations each and every day. I felt that writing the same ones all the time was too robotic and not serving me in a positive way. I didn’t see the effects it was having on my life as a whole, so that’s why I decided to stop. (Note: I didn’t completely stop writing affirmations. I just wasn’t doing it daily anymore.)
About a month into this shift in my morning routine, I noticed a shift in myself as a person. I found that I was feeling more anxious about my business. I was less sure of myself and my ability to succeed as a business owner. I was falling into a scarcity mindset in relation to my finances and my ability to get clients. I quickly realized I was regressing in my mindset as opposed to maintaining a positive one.
While the previous paragraph makes it seem like the shift I noticed was obvious, that is not the case. It took some time for me to sit with myself and realize that this change in my state of being was occurring. I had this realization about my mindset when I was on a recent trip to the Pacific North West. I had planned this trip the previous year and was so excited to connect with many friends and business owners who lived in the area. Nevertheless, I found myself feeling super anxious on my trip about money, which was dampening the excitement I had originally had for the trip. This didn’t sit right with me and led me to an intuitive knowing that something in my mindset was off.
I felt a pull while I was on my trip that I should go back to a daily affirmation practice. Intuitively, I felt a deep knowing that the positive mindset and business growth I had seen in 2021 was partially due to the affirmation practice I had throughout the whole year. I felt that the stagnation and difficulties I was feeling in my business at the start of this year were partially due to a regression in my mindset. I know affirmations help with improving my mindset, so I felt called back to them.
I specifically decided that to start it should be focused specifically on abundance since this was an immediate mindset problem I was facing, and then, from there, I could gradually branch out to other types of affirmations.
How My Mindset Affects My Business
The decision I made to start practicing affirmations again had a profound effect on my business. It had an immediate positive effect on my business finances.
As I mentioned above, I decided to start practicing affirmations again while on a trip to the PNW. It was the last day of my trip and I spent some time that morning writing out some abundance affirmations in a journal I brought with me on the trip. I did it in passing, not thinking much of it at the time. But wow, I am so glad I did.
I’m not kidding when I say this, within a few hours of writing out those abundance affirmations I had 3 new clients come through for branding/web design work. These were completely unexpected events and I was not anticipating them at all. I honestly was shocked when they came through and feel strongly that my affirmation practice helped put me in the right mindset to call these clients in. To me it felt like I performed a spell and I saw instant results.
Since coming back to my affirmation practice, I have had more abundance in my business than I’ve had the entire time when I was not practicing affirmations. I’ve had several clients come in to work with me, and have had inquiries from all kinds of different people. Mind you, at the time of writing this I am only 1 week into my affirmation practice again. I find it shocking in the best way that I am having direct financial results in connection to this practice.
I will point out that I am a pragmatic and practical person. I think that practicing affirmations has had a profound effect on my mental wellbeing and mindset. It has helped me feel more positive and strengthen my belief in myself. Through the affirmations that I am writing out each day, I am allowing myself to be the best version of myself. And by being the best version of myself, I am magnetizing my ideal clients to me. What’s not to love about that!
My Favorite Affirmations for Business
Now I’m sure you’re all wondering, what affirmations am I actually writing in my journal?! Here’s a list of some of my favorite business-specific affirmations that I’ve consistently written in my journal throughout the last two years and counting:
Money is increasingly magnetizing to me from multiple sources daily.
I am capable of anything I set my mind to.
I am connected to the divine source of my creativity.
Qualified clients who are excited to work with me and ready to invest 5K+ in their business are flowing to me with ease.
Qualified clients who I AM excited to work with are flowing to me with ease.
I am vibrating at a frequency of abundance.
Marketing my business is an effortless and fun activity.
For me, the trick to writing affirmations is starting with a specific goal. For example, let’s take my affirmation, “Qualified clients who are excited to work with me and ready to invest 5K+ in their business are flowing to me with ease.” My goal with this affirmation when I first came up with it was to draw in clients who had budgets of 5K or higher. With that in mind, I worked backward to come up with a positive statement that reflected that goal. I didn’t want to find these clients to be difficult, so I added in details about these clients finding me with ease in the affirmation itself. I also wanted to ensure that these clients were ones that would actually be worth my time working with, which is why I state that they’re qualified clients as opposed to just any type of client. Ultimately, it has led to an affirmation that reminds me on a daily basis what kinds of clients I want to work with. This helps frame my mindset with my marketing in order to draw these types of people to me.
Conclusion
While affirmations are not the end all be all of business growth and success, I do think they can play a profound role in improving your mindset if you run a business. Having a positive mindset can have a really amazing effect on your business and lead to amazing results. This is why I love practicing affirmations and continue to in my business. Let me know on IG if you try them out for yourself. I’d love to know which ones feel the most resonant for you in your business.
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Take care and talk soon,
Alex
