Very Affirming

This week's assignment to work the the affirmations I created:

• "I respect myself and create healthy boundaries" and "I am in love with life..."
• "I am financially free" 
• "I am full of optimism, hope and faith"
• "I am constantly moving forward"
• "I cook and create with love"

I found that I turned to them when I was in need of reversing distress while out and about or at work. When someone bothered me or began to encroach on my serene energy I would internally burst into "I respect myself and create healthy boundaries!!!"

It seemed to help in the same way counting backwards from 100 helps when you're really angry and need to calm down before you speak.  It was pretty interesting to experience!

I didn't use any of the other phrases I'd come up with much.  I'm sure they'll come in handy at some point though :) Maybe having written down has put them to work behind the scenes...

Another thing I realized is that there is a poem my brain defaults to when I need to calm down.  At the risk of sounding pretentious...I'll share it here:

Sonnet CXVI
by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

For some reason I felt the need to memorize this poem when I was in college. Reciting it never fails to relax me. I guess that was the reason :)

XO