Positive affirmations are positive statements your team can use to counter negative self-talk.
When your team replace the negative with the positive, they may:
- experience a greater work-life balance
- be more engaged
- reduce their work-related stress.
Your team can use positive affirmations to help maintain focus for personal and professional goals.
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TIME REQUIRED30 mins
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EFFORTLow
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TEAM SIZE2 or more
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GOOD FORMental wellbeing
What you’ll need
Physical and remote
You can do this activity together or remotely.
Everyone just needs a piece of paper and a pen.
Scheduling the session
This is a good activity to put at the start or end a regular team meeting.
How to run the activity
This a rough schedule of how you can run the session.
The key thing is to set a timer for each section of your session and stick to each time.
When people have a limited time to think, they’ll focus on the things that matter to them the most.
Set the scene (2 minutes)
Explain to your team what you want to get out of this activity:
- “We’re here to examine our thought processes and to help us turn negative thoughts into positive affirmations”
Reinforce the message of why you’re doing this:
- “It is OK to not be OK, but if we can refocus our attention on the positives, we can reduce our stress levels and increase our mood”
Write down negative thoughts (5 minutes)
Ask your team to write down the negative thoughts they’ve had at work or behaviours they want to change, such as:
- I’m not taking enough breaks
- sometimes there is too much for me to get done
- sometimes work is really hard
- some days it seems like everything is against me
Turn negative thoughts into positive affirmations (5 minutes)
Ask each person in your team to write down a positive affirmation for each negative thought, such as:
- delegation isn’t failure and it’s okay to ask my teammates for help
- it’s okay to work hard, but it’s not okay to work so hard that I’m ineffective
- it’s only work. I have so many other things in my life that make me happy
- if today isn’t my day that’s okay. tomorrow is a new day and it will be better
- my worth is not defined by my to-do list
- taking time to switch off and recharge my energy is also an important part of my job
- taking regular rest breaks will make me more productive
Display positive affirmations somewhere (5 minutes)
With what your team has written down, get them to put these somewhere prominent so they see them each day.
This could be a post-it note stuck to their computer screen or on their bedside table.
Encourage them to look at these each day and read each affirmation to themselves 5 times.
You can also tear up the negative thoughts as a cleansing exercise.