affirmations and body love

I’ll admit it, I’m a positive thinker. I tend to see the brighter side of things. Most of the time, I’m looking for what’s going well rather than what’s going wrong.

I’ve been practicing positive thinking for a long time. I’ve been rewiring my brain to overcome my natural, human negative bias so that I am more sensitive to positive and pleasurable circumstances and less to negative ones.

So when I ran across a list of positive affirmations to encourage body self-love recently, I was excited. Who doesn’t want to feel more sexy and alive? I have 5 minutes a day to feel good in my body.

But then I read them, and some of them made me, fluffy-bunny-rainbow-unicorn-fairy girl, cringe. Because affirmations only work if you believe them. If I’m not feeling sexy in my body, saying “I am a sexy beast” does not make me feel sexy. It makes me feel like crap.

Rather than trying to fake it till you make it, start right where you are. If you wake up feeling fabulous in your body, then “I feel sexy and alive” is a great affirmation. But if you wake up on the other side of fabulous, you can try “I’m alive and I want to feel sexy”. See how that one rings more true in the moment? And from there you can move on to “I’m getting closer to feeling sexy’ and then “Hot damn I’m sexy!”

“I deserve love” can be more helpful that “I am loved” if you’re not feeling it. “I want pleasure” might ring more true in the moment that “I deserve pleasure”. “I love having a body” is a great segue to “I love my body”. “I feel my body” can be more helpful than “I feel sexy in my body”.

Trust that right where you are is okay. Start there, and see how much easier to shift towards where you want to be. You got this.