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TLDR: skip to the Do's and Don'ts at the bottom.
I admire anyone who strives for personal growth. Introspection takes guts. Looking inward with humility, and moving forward in spite of personal failings and loss requires great courage and inner strength. In my own pursuit of growth, I practice daily yoga and meditation, read books on self-improvement, and work hard to achieve that elusive balance between humility and confidence. I strive to be mindful and purposeful in my life and my work, and as a part of this, I practice evidence-based affirmation techniques to help me be resilient and open to new information as I work toward my goals.
It is critical to understand that not all affirmations are evidence-based, and not all affirmations will help you reach your goals. When behavioral scientists like myself talk about using affirmations to improve self-control and strengthen one’s sense of self, this is very different from the type of affirmations you will often come across in a typical Google search.
What are Affirmations? 'Affirming core values' means thinking about what matters most to you.
When behavioral scientists recommend affirmations, we are not saying you should stand in front of the mirror like Stuart Smalley and tell yourself pretty little falsehoods that you wish would eventually come true. What we are referring to is a very specific type of activity that has been shown through many studies in various contexts to improve performance (Cohen et al., 2006), increase self-control (Schmeichel and Vohls, 2009), and promote openness to important information that may otherwise be hard to hear (Harris et al., 2007). The task is to affirm your core values, and it goes like this:
- Make a list of values that you most admire or strive to live by, AND/OR
- Take ten minutes to write about one of your deepest values. Why is it important to you? What makes it so admirable? How do you personally align your life with this value?
The purpose of affirming your core values is to spend time thinking about what matters most to you. It is meant to help you get in touch with the deep motivations that are a core part of your sense of identity.
A simple example is the first paragraph of this article. Personal growth is one of my core values, and writing about why I admire it and how I strive to live by that value was an exercise in affirming that value. The method is very simple, but the effects can be powerful and long lasting. In one of the most famous studies on this technique, minority students who wrote about a core value at the beginning of the semester had higher grades at the end of the semester than those who did not. That’s a pretty large payoff for a ten-minute task.
How do they work? When our self-worth is threatened, we can use affirmations to strengthen our sense of identity and replenish our inner store of strength.
I talk a lot about stories. Our cultural stories and personal narratives shape our views of life and the world around us, affecting all of our decisions. In the end, an affirmation is simply a story about what you value and why. Focusing on stories that are true and hold positive meaning for us can have a beneficial impact on the decisions we make.
Self-Affirmation Theory
Researchers who study the effects of affirmations on behavior believe that the power of affirmations comes from their ability to help us maintain a stable sense of identity in the face of threatening information. We each have a broad sense of who we are, and we try to keep our actions consistent with that identity. When our sense of self-worth is threatened in some way (when we experience rejection, criticism, or failure, for example) we draw on resources from our ‘psychological immune system’ (Gilbert et al., 1998), such as rationalizing. For example, if we pride ourselves on being honest, yet are caught in a lie, we may rationalize that behavior by saying, “I’m an honest person, but that guy couldn’t handle hearing the truth.” In this way, we protect our self-view from threat by rationalizing. Rationalizing is not the only tool we have at our disposal, though.
In a 2013 paper, Dr. David Sherman explained that affirming our worth in one area of our lives helps us to handle the threat of criticism or failure in others. Using this strategy, rather than rationalizing your behavior, if you are caught in a lie, you might say to yourself, “Yes. I lied, and that goes against my values. But, I am someone who is committed to growth, and I will try to do better next time.” By affirming your deep values in the area of personal growth it allows you to acknowledge the information that could otherwise be damaging to your overall sense of self. Affirming values in one area of life helps us be stronger in others. In one notable experiment, people who affirmed core values were more open to hearing information about possible risks to their own health than those who did not. Bolstering your self-worth may improve our ability to cope with the harsh realities of life, rather than hiding from the truth through rationalization.
Ego-Depletion
While the concept of ego depletion, and how it is tested in the laboratory, has recently been brought under harsh criticism by the academic community, we all know our egos get bruised. We can all relate to having less self-control when we are tired, hungry, sad, angry, or afraid, and who hasn’t gone on a shopping spree after a painful break-up or a bad performance review? We don’t have to sabotage our finances in order to feel whole, though, and here again, affirmations can help. By spending a few minutes remembering what we value, we are tapping into our broader sense of self; the person that is larger than the relationship, role, or trait that is threatened at the moment. When we think about our values, we take a step back from the heat of the moment and put some psychological distance between our self and the situation at hand. Affirming our core values helps to give us a broader perspective (Schmeichel and Vohls, 2009), allowing us to make more clear-headed and rational decisions. It’s not the power of positive thinking, but the power of perspective that does the job.
What’s the catch? As with all good things, there are exceptions to the rule.
Since I advocate for the use of affirmations to benefit financial behaviors, I was concerned to read that they might not work when used on purpose. In most of the studies testing the effects of affirmations on behavior, the participants were not aware that the affirmations were intended to bolster their self-worth and restore their sense of identity. To investigate whether affirmations still work when the participants know WHY they are doing them, a group of psychologists set up a series of experiments where some of the participants knew the purpose of the affirmations activity and others did not. They found that when they told participants that the affirmation was intended to increase self-esteem, the effect was reduced (Sherman et al., 2009)
Wait...what? If they don’t work when you know they are supposed to boost your self-worth, what good are they?
I was concerned about the findings from this paper, so I reached out to Dr. David Nussbaum, one of the researchers who ran those experiments, to get his perspective.
“The idea here is that for an affirmation to be effective…you have to legitimately believe that the content of the affirmation is true. That's actually why the "Stuart Smalley" version of affirmation, where he stares into the mirror and desperately tries to convince himself that he's good enough and smart enough, is so transparently ineffective. He doesn't actually believe it.”
With this in mind, let’s return to the first point and look at what it means to affirm core values. This type of affirmation involves thinking or writing about the things that are most important to you. These are the precepts you live by and the traits you admire most in yourself and others. When you write about these things, you are getting in touch with the parts of yourself that you feel most confident about. Speaking about what the minority students in the study cited earlier, Dr. Sherman said:
“When you look at what the students write, you see that they are generally not boosting their egos or self-aggrandizing. What they do is remind themselves of who they are, and what is important to them. They are reaffirming a narrative about themselves that they are okay people who have core values that will be with them through the ups and downs of school. And this helps the students see threatening events from a broader perspective, and these threats become less of a stressor and less disruptive of their academic motivation and efficacy." (Sherman and Hartson, 2011)
Affirmations may work when you understand that their power comes from offering a broader perspective, but they will not work when they are transparently false, you think they are just a manipulation to try to make you feel better, or when you truly feel powerless in the face of your situation. Again, Dr. Nussbaum:
“Self-affirmation is not some sort of miracle cure. Basically, it's just a shortcut to a grounded view of yourself that helps you recognize that things are pretty good, and whatever happens in this given crisis is unlikely to be as bad as it originally seemed.Paired with that, it's power has limits when the threats become larger -- if you're really on the verge of being fired, or getting divorced, or really sick, then it's not really possible to remind yourself that everything is ok, when you truly believe that it's not, although even then it might help you approach the problem head on rather than engaging defensive mechanisms that usually just make things worse.”
Conclusion
All affirmation techniques are not created equal. For affirmations to be effective, they need to help you tap into your sense of real value as a person. When used correctly, they can have a big impact on your bottom line. Rather than whipping out your credit card next time you have a rough day at work, and then kick yourself when the bill comes due, you can approach the situation with greater understanding.
The power of affirmations to help boost our self-control in times of emotional stress, or identity threat is not in thinking pretty thoughts, but in remembering that you are bigger than the moment, and you are valuable as a person in spite of whatever crisis you are facing.
Don’t:
- Tell yourself pretty falsehoods you know are not true
- Try to ‘attract’ money by thinking positive thoughts. (Or if you do, please don’t say it’s science).
- Focus on areas of your value system where you feel personally weak.
Do:
- Spend some time NOW thinking about the values and traits that you are most proud of in yourself. Are you honest? Courageous? Do you do your best to help others in need when you can? Do you value loyalty, compassion, leadership, or kindness? How do you embody these values in your own life?
- Write a paragraph, or even just a sentence or two, about why this value is important to you. And put it in your wallet.
- Next time you are feeling low, and you want to spend money that you know you really shouldn’t. Take out that note, and read it. Spend just a minute or two thinking about who you REALLY are, and remember the things that make you valuable.
You are more than the circumstances that drain you. You can handle the ego-draining events as they come up, and you can do it without compromising your values, or your savings.
