The Importance of Positive Self Affirmations

In order to address the importance of self affirmations, one must first know the definition of the word 'self'. The dictionary defines 'self' as the true nature of a person. It is the 'self' which makes one person different from other people. This might be termed 'the individuality of a person'. It may be said that 'self' is the very essence of who we are. ‘Self’ is the “I”, which is the distinguishing facet of our very existence.

Now that we have formulated a definition for 'self', we must also make sure we have a firm understanding of the word 'affirmation', which is the assertion that something is or exists. Therefore, self affirmation is not concerned with 'I think therefore I am' but rather “I am therefore I think and act and react'.

Probably the most important feature of self affirmation is to examine how we feel about ourselves. The integrity of ‘self’ is concerned with the dignity of self worth. While most people will not be deeply effected by the way someone else perceives us compared to how we think, how we act, or even how we react to a given situation, the minute someone attacks the 'who I am', everything changes. After all, self-esteem determines how we feel about ourselves.

Many people shy away from self affirmation, preferring to hide or conceal their true selves by being part of the crowd, or by taking comfort in the theory of 'safety in numbers'. To stand on one’s own self identity or to exercise self affirmation, immediately opens a person up to facing the fact that only they can react to what others think. If you go this far, then you have to develop some guard rail type mechanism to ward off pressure from other people to change the way you think or act or react in any given situation.

If a person found that they were adopted into a family, their first reaction is to ask questions so as to learn where they came from and who their parents were. All this in order to identify the 'I' or as Sigmund Freud termed this concept 'the ego'.

One of the interesting hobbies, and for some people, obsessions of the modern world, is genealogy which enables a person to chart their ancestry in an attempt to learn who they are, where they came from, their roots, or their 'I Am'.

When most people hear the term 'peer pressure', they associate it as being a part of growth and development as the human being progresses from infancy to adulthood, especially concerning the passage through the teen years. Few people stop to realize that peer pressure has no age limit and can do more damage to their self affirmation than anything else in the world. One of the worst facets of peer pressure is that it causes one to compare oneself to others. Once we begin to compare ourselves to others, we immediately lose our individuality, or self integrity or the very 'I' which identifies each of us and this makes it easy to see the importance of self affirmations.