How to create a mantra for now

Posted: by Jo Tuesday, 20 March 2018 @ 18:18

If you have a particular challenge in your life right now, or a particular situation that is worrying you or causing you to lose sleep, you might want to create a mantra to use as a positive affirmation.

Affirmations are different to mantras, as they are usually phrased as ‘I am..’, and they may not strictly be true at the present moment. They are seeking to reinforce a view of yourself that you feel would be useful and productive to have – but which you do not necessarily believe to be true right now. They work, because they are a form of ‘faking it until you make it’ – giving yourself some positive self-talk to build your self-confidence.

Think of a current challenging situation. Write down the most negative phrase you can about that situation, that puts all the blame on yourself.

For example – when I was training for the London Marathon last year, I simply wasn’t doing enough training, and I was finding it very hard to focus when I did have a block of time to do some training. I wrote down, “You aren’t fit enough, you aren’t fast enough, and you just aren’t training enough. You will fail to finish.”

Then flip that phrase around to its polar opposite – and re-write it as a positive and upbeat belief statement:

“I am fast enough, fit enough, focused enough”.

Repeat this new, positive phrase as often as you can, and particularly when it is most relevant, to aim to change your inner beliefs about yourself, and re-set your mind.

I certainly found that this mantra took away all the negative self-talk in my head, stopped all the over-thinking, and meant I could just concentrate on making the most of the training time that I had.