The mythical ”Little Engine That Could” used it, and now many women are employing the same simple principle to help improve their well-being.
Self-affirmation, the practice of repeating positive messages and guiding inner talk to enhance well-being, is gaining mainstream momentum in the `90s. Devotees of the practice say the approach can be a powerful tool in directing them down a positive path for growth in their emotional, career, family and other relationship realms. Women especially are embracing the practice, self- help experts say.
”It`s an effective way in which women can learn to believe in themselves, which comes from within them,” says Dr. Marilyn Mason, a Minneapolis-based psychologist and author of ”Making Our Lives Our Own: A Woman`s Guide to the Six Challenges of Personal Change” (Harper San Francisco, $18.95).
The theory of affirmation is that what we think helps determine how we feel and ultimately influences the quality of our lives.
Mason`s book is among a bumper crop of recently released titles which advocate affirmation.
”Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much,” (Harper San Francisco, $8.95), by Anne Wilson Schaef, a Boulder, Colo., psychologist, is another. A collection of daily quotations with supplemental thoughtful messages, the book is scheduled to go into its 11th printing in February.
Another Harper author, Pamela Butler, a clinical psychologist, says she conceived the idea for her recently reissued book, ”Talking to Yourself:
Learning the Language of Affirmation” (Harper San Francisco, $10.95), when she realized how carefully her clients talked about other people but how
”vicious” they were in talking about themselves. In the book Butler offers ways to transform negative inner voices into positive ones that can
”mean the difference in our lives between self-confidence and self-doubt.”
Her tips for balancing inner-talk include:
– Be aware of what you say to yourself: Write down certain themes that seem to surface constantly.
– Evaluate what you have said. Are you supporting or (more likely)
criticizing yourself?
– Support yourself. Give yourself permission to need help and make mistakes.
”Through self-affirmation you achieve self-esteem, which is a healthy relationship with yourself,” Mason says. ”It takes a lot of repetition to turn negative talk into positive. But in the end, women, who have been socialized to believe that thinking about themselves and their needs is self- centered, will realize that it`s really self-affirmation.”
