Here’s how to make these affirmations power up your relationship
Science now shows your can actually re-wire your brain. Thanks to studies in neuroplasticity, the brain has been shown to be flexible, malleable instead of fixed as previously understood. In my practice area of Cognitive Behavioral Coaching and Neuro-Linguistic Programming, we look specifically at how your language, beliefs and words shape your brain — the mainframe operating system for your actions and behaviors.
Affirmations — powerful little phrases that are used to re-program a person’s mindset — are one of the tools in this process. The more you say them, the more your brain starts to adopt them as its primary operating structure in any particular category.
If you’re not already a fan of affirmations, here are two ways to use them:
- Combat automatic negative thoughts. If you’re looping on a negative thought, one way to start to reprogram the brain is to find the opposite and frame up a positive affirmation. So if your negative automatic thought is “I’m such a failure.” a positive affirmation to replace it would be “I succeed at many of my tasks.” or “I am successful more often than not.” As affirmation-critics may point out, these only work if you believe them and often times if our negative automatic thought is “I’m such a failure” that is usually the more dominant belief…to start. And that brings us to our second way to use affirmations.
- Initiate a dialogue with the Inner Critic. When we don’t believe something, our Inner Critic will come in like that know-it-all we all loved to hate in grade-school. The Inner Critic will come in bossy; it will come in loud; it will come in to tell you all the reasons your new positive affirmation is so unavoidably and clearly wrong. This is a huge gift because once we have an awareness of that Inner Critic’s voice and all its go-to arguments, we can start to disempower the Inner Critic. From that point is where true transformation and liberation takes form.
So while you can work on your own personal beliefs, you can also use affirmations to powerfully shift your relationships.
Here are 7 affirmations for creating a Conscious Relationship.
- The love between my partner and me is stronger than our fights and misunderstandings.
- My partner and I give our relationship the time and attention it deserves.
- I never pretend to be somebody else when I am with my partner.
- I know I am worthy of love, and I deserve to be in a loving and healthy relationship.
- I am committed to creating a healthy, open, conscious relationship.
- I take ownership of my role in my relationships.
- I give and receive unconditional love.
Now, that you have these affirmations for creating a conscious relationship, here is a tip on how to work with these affirmations in practice.
You can handwrite them 10 or more times on a piece of paper then say them out loud with varying intonations. This is the most impactful way to do it. Alternatively, you can do one or the other — write or say them out loud. This is best done daily or multiple times a week.
For those of you who like to go deeper, divide your paper into two columns. On the left side write the affirmations and on the right side capture the voice of your Inner Critic.
To further uplevel your conscious relationship habits, visit Happy Partners Project for the acclaimed Relationship Check-In (TM) deck already being used by over 15,000 people, relationship courses and free resources like this one!
Jocelyn Johnson is the founder of Happy Partners Project and the creator of the Relationship Check-In (TM) Method, the acclaimed science and psych-backed process for strengthening relationships and empowering couples to create their best relationship. She coaches couples and individuals to integrate conscious relationships habits, heal relational wounds and accelerate change. She is certified in Cognitive Behavioral Coaching, Neuro-linguistic Programming and Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy.
This post is from the Happy Partners Project — a mission-driven e-commerce company designing and delivering products that support couples and individuals with building and sustaining healthy and blissful relationships.
Happy Partners Project is also the creator of the acclaimed “Relationship Check-In™ Method” — a science and psych-backed process for strengthening relationships.
The belief is that happier partners build happier homes and ultimately have healthier communication, greater life satisfaction and increased emotional intelligence.
For those couples who have children, we also believe that modeling healthy relationships will have legacy effects on the next generation of emotionally intelligent, well-adjusted humans.
