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Affirmations

Posted on 2025 Aug 12


  1. Change is inevitable, and that brings me hope.
  2. I am a part of the universe, and I am changing with it.
  3. I feel alive: I observe the universe as it changes me, and I shape the universe as I change it.

  4. I appreciate my body. Trillions of cells are working together at every moment to sustain a beautiful, complex system that is my self. I cannot thank my cells, so instead I try to treat them well.
  5. I appreciate my senses, for the gift of observing the universe including myself. I appreciate each sense I do have, knowing each is a privilege. I appreciate hunger, drowsiness, pain, and discomfort, which help me to understand and care for my cells. I appreciate my emotions, and the insights and wisdom they bring when I attend to them.
  6. I appreciate my power, for the gift of shaping the universe including myself. I appreciate each of my muscles. I appreciate my intellect which can communicate and remember and imagine. I appreciate the extent of my power, including the privileges afforded to me by where and when and how I exist.

  7. Humans are inherently valuable. If I am valuable, then so is everyone. If everyone is valuable, then so am I.
  8. Love, health, safety, peace. For myself, for my family, for my friends, for my enemies, for everyone else in the world I do not yet know.
  9. Life will always be this hard. There will always be good reasons NOT to do something. Planning is helpful until it is not. Life is the plan. Keep It Moving (KIM).





Last year I was in a very difficult place mentally and emotionally. I desperately needed structure and routine to my days. One of my best friends suggested compiling a list of daily affirmations, and this is what I came up with.

I have reviewed these affirmations maybe 100 times over the last 10 months. For me, each of the nine items comes with some opportunity for mental engagement (listed below), and that mental engagement is what makes the practice still worth it to me after 10 months.

  1. Most days, I feel (to some extent) hopeless, stuck, in an inescapable tragedy. For this item, I acknowledge that feeling, and consciously reject it.
  2. This item asks me to view myself and the universe as one. There is no boundary between myself and the rest of the universe. I want to feel out-of-body.
  3. I come back into myself, and put back the pretend wall between me and the rest.
  4. I try to focus on my corporeality. I give myself a hug, a pat on the back.
  5. I stimulate each of my senses. I check in on my body for discomforts I did not notice.
  6. I move my body, maybe individual muscles or maybe all together. Sometimes I take a moment to think about my relationship to society.
  7. I let myself feel a hedonistic, unconditional love, first for every human in the world and then for myself.
  8. I pick a few people from each category (excepting everyone else) to wish love, health, safety, and peace. It forces me to focus on my relationships rather than myself.
  9. I again acknowledge the feeling of stuckness and hopelessness. For me, some of that stuckness is tied up in anxiety around that which I cannot know or control. Here I force myself to accept that risk and uncertainty are a part of life, and dare myself to take some small leaps of faith.
Acknowledgements

John: I have only one piece of advice for young people, really, in 2024, which is to develop a sense of the value of all human beings, including yourself.

Hank: Mhmm.

John: The inherent value. So that it's not about what you accomplish, it's not about what you do. You are valuable because you are here with us, because you are an important part of this astonishing 250,000 year old story.

Hank: And if you have value, so does everybody else. And if everybody else does, so do you.

John: So do you. That's it. That is my advice. And as I have tried to do that over the last four months, I have become vastly happier.



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