Affirmations… But Let’s Be Honest About Them

Before we go any further, let’s just clarify what I’m musing about this week …At their simplest, affirmations are just short, intentional statements you say to yourself, either out loud or in your head, designed to influence how you think and feel.

They’re definitely not about pretending everything’s perfect or forcing yourself into blind positivity, to me, they are more about becoming more aware of the language you use with yourself and choosing something that supports you rather than knocks you down.

When I first came across affirmations, I resisted them, rolled my eyes a bit, tried them half-heartedly and quickly decided they were a load of bollocks.

The idea of standing in front of a mirror, telling myself how amazing I was, when deep down I didn’t believe a word of it, just felt awkward, forced and very cringe. If anything, it highlighted the gap between where I was and where I thought I should be, which didn’t exactly help.

And yet, here I am years later, creating deck 2 of the Funky Diva Vibes cards centred around them. So something obviously shifted at some point.

If I take myself back, there was a period where my self-worth was properly low. There’d been a steady drip of things that, over time, chipped away at how I felt about myself. My disability played into it, and my weight did too, my first marriage, my work life… all of it fed into an underlying sense that I wasn’t quite measuring up. And the voice in my head reflected that.

I was always striving and trying to be better but never quite satisfied. I was constantly measuring myself against other people’s targets, other people’s versions of success, and then quietly judging myself for not hitting them.

I hid in baggy black clothes for a long time during my Treble F period (fat, fed up and frumpy). It felt safer somehow, like I could shrink myself a bit, stay under the radar. At the same time, I was working harder and harder to prove myself, which is exhausting when you think about it, because you’re chasing something that keeps moving.

There’s a memory from primary school that always comes back to me when I think about this. Igot 98% on a maths test. Which, when you say it out loud, is brilliant. But all I felt was failure, because Derek Walker had beat me with 99% and I was worried about telling my dad.

That feeling of “not quite good enough” doesn’t just disappear, it settles in and becomes familiar. Shaping how you see yourself without you even realising.

So when affirmations came along into my life, you can probably imagine why they didn’t land.

If your internal voice is saying you’re behind, you’re not good enough, you should be doing better, then suddenly trying to override that with something overly positive just doesn’t stick. Your brain isn’t convinced because you are stuck in the Sausage Machine and if anything, it pushes back.

And I think this is where affirmations can get a bad reputation, because they’re often presented as these big, bold statements that you’re supposed to believe straight away, and when you don’t, you end up thinking they don’t work.

What changed for me was when I heard about the law of attraction. At the time I was so rock bottom I’d have tried anything but the theory behind it made sense. In simple terms, it’s the idea that what you focus on, think about, and believe tends to shape what you notice and experience in your life.

Not in a “wish for it and it appears” kind of magic genie way, but more in how your attention and energy influence your decisions, your actions, and what you’re open to. When you start to expect something different for yourself, you begin to behave differently, and that’s where the shift can happen.

I also started learning about NLP, (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and the idea that the language we use, especially internally, has an impact on how we think and feel. But more than the theory, I started noticing my own patterns, the day-to-day, running commentary and realising that my internal voice was quite negative.

Because when you think about it we’re all already using affirmations, whether we call them that or not. It’s just that a lot of them are negative ones we’ve repeated so many times they feel like facts.

“I can’t do that.”
“I’m not ready.”
“I’m not that kind of person.”

Say something often enough and your brain starts to accept it. It wires it in and it becomes the default setting. The words you use influence your thoughts, your thoughts influence your feelings, and your feelings influence how you show up. So if the language is harsh, critical, or dismissive, that’s the version of you that leads the way.

The shift, for me, was about softening that voice, becoming a bit kinder, a bit more compassionate, and a bit more aware of what I was saying to myself. Over time, those small shifts start to calm my nervous system and my self-worth started to rebuild.

And then there’s manifestation, which for me, it’s not about wishful thinking or sitting there hoping something will magically appear, it’s more about alignment and awareness.

When you start to believe that something might be possible for you, even just slightly, you begin to notice things differently. Opportunities that you might have ignored before suddenly stand out. You make different decisions. You respond differently in situations. So then your thoughts do shape your reality, but not in a magical way more in a practical, behavioural way.

The one affirmation that has stayed with me through all of this is “I am worthy” because I realised that without that belief, it’s very hard to move forward. If you don’t feel worthy of being seen, of taking up space, of trying something new, you’ll either hold yourself back or find ways to undermine yourself along the way.

This is why affirmations and this type of thinking now sit at the heart of my work, even though what I do might look like it’s about clothes on the surface. If someone doesn’t believe they are worthy of expressing themselves, of being visible, of doing things differently, then no amount of “what to wear” advice is going to make a lasting difference.

That’s also why the Funky Diva Deck 2 is centred around affirmations. It feels more personal and reflective. It’s not me (or the Divas) telling you what to think. It’s about giving you a moment to pause, to pick a card, and to land on something that resonates in that moment. And hopefully the feeling of “that’s exactly what I needed today” isn’t random. It’s recognition and is something in you responding.

So believe me if affirmations feel a bit uncomfortable, or even a bit ridiculous, I completely get it. I’ve been there. However, when they’re grounded, when they meet you where you are rather than where you think you should be, they can become something else entirely.

They can be a tool to help you shift your internal voice from being your harshest critic to something that feels more like support. And then that, over time, changes how you think, how you feel, and how you show up.

If there’s one place to start, it’s simply noticing what you’re already saying to yourself. From there, you can begin to gently shift the language, not perfectly and not all at once, but in a way that feels doable because that’s where the real change begins.