Affirmations?

Don't shoot me, but I've started using affirmations. EEK!

I don't belive, like Scott (Dilbert) Adams does, that saying something a bajillion times is enough to make it happen.

However, they seem to help me be less stressed, and more positive.

My life seems to go like this -- something goes wrong, like getting sick. It depresses me. Then I get depressed at how hard life is and how rotten it is that I have to keep doing stuff even when I'm feeling sick and depressed. Life sucks, and it's not fair and I need a vacation and waaaa!

It always ends in tears.

I go along like that for some period of time. Then I get tired of being depressed and start remembering that I can do something about it.

So I take a step or two, like remembering to relax now and then, and to not make such global statements as "I can never...." That reminds me that I can change how I feel. That reminds me that I haven't done any affirmations for a while. Then I add some into my routine, and start feeling even better. Pretty soon I'm humming along.

Now, it may be that affirmations have nothing to do with feeling better -- that just doing something positive is what turns the corner on the gloom and doom thinking. That's fine.

But for now the positive thing I choose to do is to say a few affirmations to get me going.

Nothing fancy, nothing unrealistic.

My favorite one is an uber-affirmation I got from Susan Jeffers, in her book Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway -- "Whatever happens, I'll handle it."

That one says it all, really. It says, "No need to panic and get depressed; whatever happens is handle-able."

I have to admit, that I don't actually spend a lot of time repeating these affirmations. I recorded myself saying them ten times each, put it on my Palm T3, and now listen to them from time to time.

I mean, let's not go overboard on this stuff.