3 Powerful Affirmations : April 2021 Monthly Review

Hey beautiful you, I hope that you’ve been well.

Since the beginning of 2021, I have been sharing with you my Monthly Reflections and I hope that they’ve helped you even just a little bit in creating intentional life.

So far, I’ve shared Top 3 Ideas for a Monthly Review to stay focused. In February Monthly Review, I shared an Effective Checklist for your Monthly Review and I showed you How to use a checklist for a Monthly Review.

First full week of May now, and it’s that time again to do another Monthly Review.

This post is for you if you’re experiencing some minor bumps while working on achieving your goals.

I’m sharing 3 Powerful Affirmations that I use when things don’t go well as planned.

And it could have not been more timely because I felt that April was not what I hoped for.

If you are feeling deflated or demotivated for whatever reasons (although I hope you don’t because that feeling sucks), I hope this post helps you get through it somehow.

What’s Affirmation?

Have you ever noticed that sometimes, it’s easier to focus on the negative rather than the positive?

It’s because our brain has a tendency to focus on the negative instead of the positive. That’s why it’s hard to get over unpleasant experiences. This is referred to as a negative bias. Very Well Mind has a good article on Negativity Bias.

There are so many ways we can try to manage negative bias but one super effective way that I find helpful is the use of Affirmations.

Affirmations are positive statements that we can use so we can focus on the positive sides of things instead of the negative

Using powerful affirmations doesn’t mean that we are completely disregarding the negative. I don’t think it’s good to do it that way because making ourselves believe that negative doesn’t exist is unrealistic.

Life is about negative and positive, the ups and downs and the ebb and flow. They are the circumstances and for the most part, their impact on our lives has more to do with how we perceive them.

Let me explain a little bit more what I mean by that. So, when something happened to us, whether it’s bad or good, they are just circumstance. How it affects us has something to do with how we react to that circumstance.

So, it’s safe to say that we can change the effects of a particular circumstance just by being strategic with how we react towards those circumstances. This is particularly true for those circumstances that we don’t have control of.

I’ll give you an example to give a little more context in this idea. Let say we set a goal. We did everything we could but we failed. (Circumstance). In this situation, there maybe two possible reactions.

Reaction one : we could be completely negative about it and give up.

The second reaction can be: we could use the positive mindset and view it as a learning curve or growth phase.

So, if we choose reaction 2, the circumstance is not negative as it seems at the beginning, and more likely, our next actions will be more positive. Positive actions often result to positive results.

3 Powerful Affirmations for when things didn’t go well

In the example situation I’ve given you above, you may think that, if that’s the case, then we can just choose the positive reaction all the time. This is true but, it’s hard to do though. Remember the negativity bias?

This is where the Affirmations come in handy.

1. This is just temporary and I can make things better

One thing I have learned by being reflective of my circumstance is the idea of circumstances being temporary. Whether it’s happiness or sadness, they don’t stay constant for a very long time. I mean, of course, length of time is relevant and this could look different from people to people but ultimately, change is always bound to happen.

So having this affirmation means that if we are in a negative situation, then we can be gentle and more supportive to ourselves to go swim through until we pull it through and we will.

It’s the same when we are in a positive situation. In this case, because we know that it’s temporary, we then live in the moment, appreciate the present and everything in it knowing that things may change.

2. I will get there, it’s just taking a little bit of time

When we are trying to achieve a goal, particularly a life goal, which can be hard to measure, we have to remember that the journey is not always going to be a straight line. We are going to falter somehow, somewhere and there will always be temporary setbacks for many possible reasons.

So, being realistic and being patient is one way of keeping at it.

Success doesn’t happen overnight as people say. And I believe this. Unless of course, the success we are talking about short term and specific goals, like drinking 8 glasses of water. This maybe be achieved in a short time.

But if we are talking about Life Goals, it’s going to take time.

3. I’m making progress. I’m making things happen one step at a time

This part is focused on life goals. As an example, let’s use one of my goals which is to be a Successful Intentional Blogger in 3 to 5 years. This is a big goal and it involves a lot of Big Projects. Because I’m learning as I go, tracking progress is challenging because, I won’t know now what I will know in the next 6 months and beyond.

All I can do is take whatever I can with hr resources I have at and use them, learning along the way.

I can only act on what I know and what I have now. This is what I realised lately. So I decided to be more focused on tasks rather than my goal. I’m not forgetting them, I’m just not too focused on them on daily basis.

What I mean by this is, whilst this big goal is in the back of my head (and is written in my Bullet Journal), I don’t think of this goal so much every day. I try to focus on the smaller tasks that will complete my project that will lead to achieving this goal.

We just need to remember that if we are going to be task-focused, we need to make sure that those tasks are related to the projects. And those projects are related to the big goal or the big picture. Otherwise, we might be completing something that is completely different from what we really want to achieve.

April 2021 Monthly Review

My initial thought of April was not good, I thought I didn’t make much progress. This might not be entirely true, I thought, so, before I lose my motivation completely, I had to do something.

I paid attention with my thoughts and challenged myself how quickly I could turn things around. I felt I worked really hard so I must have made some progress. And there’s no better strategy I can think of than looking at my Bullet Journal notes and be intentionally reflective.

And you know what? It worked. Having a second look at my April at a glance page in my Bullet Journal, I realised that it was not all that bad. It just goes to show that, thoughts in our heads can be different when they are written on paper.

April was not as bad as I initially thought. Yes, I skipped a couple of weeks of posting and I it seemed that I didn’t get much done in the blog, but there were so many wins behind the scene.

The Kon Mari Project was going well. In April, we finished the clothes and books category.

I paused the Pinning Tasks in Pinterest due to change of domain name but I was able to attend a 3-day workshop about Digital Product Creations. So, that was a also a win. In the end, the good stuff were more than the not-so- great stuff.

Next Actions

I hope that you find these 3 Affirmations helpful.

Now that we know about Negativity bias and we know that Affirmations can help manage those negative thoughts, I have a challenge for you for next week.

Pay attention to your thoughts. Challenge it if they’re not helpful thoughts. Then, try and reframe those thoughts.

Use the Affirmations until you see the change in what you think and what you feel.