- So lately I've found myself in a bit of a slump.
I really don't have a lot of motivation.
I've been doubting a lot about what I've been doing
with my life. (laughs)
And, you know, I just, I-I feel like I'm-I'm in a rut.
And so I thought, hey, why not try daily affirmations?
Why not?
(upbeat instrumental music)
If you haven't yet been initiated into the wonderful world
of positive thinking and daily affirmations,
here's what it's all about.
Most people go throughout their day
followed by a trail of negative self-talk.
(text popping) We're filled with doubt,
anxieties, and we're constantly questioning
our own abilities.
A daily affirmation is intended to break that cycle
by reinforcing positive thoughts about yourself.
How do you do this?
By reading a script in front of a mirror every morning.
I am beautiful, (text popping)
confident and strong. (text popping)
And the repetition is supposed to change
how you actually think about yourself.
Does it work?
Well, that's what I wanna find out,
and so I'm gonna try daily affirmations for the next week.
This video is brought to you by Storyblocks,
I'll talk more about them later.
Okay, and so to get started, I need to find an affirmation.
Now, I suppose I could write one myself
but I wanna get started off nice and easy.
So I'm just gonna Google it, and I'm just gonna see
if I can find any daily affirmations that really align
with what I'm going through right now.
And so primarily what I'm going through
is lack of motivation, self-doubt, and perfectionism.
So I don't know if I can find one
that hits all three, (chuckles)
or really there's probably like five or 10 things
that are going on right now.
But anyway, I'm gonna find one that fits best
with what I'm going through,
and then I'm gonna do it.
(uplifting instrumental music)
So let's do it.
(uplifting instrumental music) (keyboard keys clacking)
(whistling)
I don't like these.
(laughing)
Okay. No, this is so bad.
This is gross.
I thought an affirmation was like a paragraph.
This is fucking hard.
I don't think I can do this. (laughing)
Oh my God.
I don't think I can do it.
These are so corny. (clicking)
I'd rather do cold showers every day for an entire year.
Then have to read this out loud.
It's fine.
This is cool.
Nobody's going to laugh at me.
Okay, so I have found one that feels somewhat reasonable
for me.
It's not completely corny and over the top, and it seems to
have some of what I'm going through, baked into it
and so I'm going to do it.
Now.
(sigh)
(clears throat)
Life doesn't have to be perfect, to be beautiful.
I am more than enough.
Okay. Don't joke.
This is serious.
Take it seriously.
Peace and happiness are inside me. (laughs)
It's hard not to like, okay, this is serious.
This is real. This is real.
Okay, here we go.
(laughs)
If you can't already tell daily affirmations
aren't exactly my thing.
I'm not into woo woo self-development stuff.
And this is clearly not in my very small comfort zone
but I'm a strong believer
in experimentation and testing your own assumptions
and since I'm currently in a funk, I thought, why not?
In fact, I think this should actually be an ongoing series
on this channel.
We can call it.
Don't knock it because you shouldn't knock it
until you try it unless we're talking about drugs
because then you should definitely try it.
Don't try it.
Don't do drugs kids.
It's a bad idea.
I accept and love myself for who I am.
That's it?
That was it. That's not bad.
I can get used to that.
It was weird in the beginning, but cool.
(alarm)
All right, so I've been doing this daily affirmation thing
for a couple of days now.
It's been going pretty well
but I feel like there's something missing.
I think it's more of the personal touch,
so catering the daily affirmations to my own life
and more to the things that I'm going through as-as
great as it feels
looking in the mirror and calling myself beautiful.
I want to kind of narrow it
in on myself and-and my life more specifically.
And so I figured I should get some help with this.
And so I'm going to actually ask Natalie to help me
out in crafting the perfect affirmation.
All right, Nat, so I need your help.
So I've been working on daily affirmations
- Have you? Did you start?
- Yeah, I did actually look it, these are the
- No, you didn't.
- Yeah, look it, these are the daily affirmations.
- Oh my god, really?
- Yeah, yeah
(laughs)
- Do we even know each other?
You want me to write one?
- Yeah, so this is the deal is that these are
daily affirmations I just pulled from the internet
and some of them are really corny.
Like it's, it's been kind of funny
but it's like, I am strong, beautiful and confident.
I just ripped, I just pulled one.
- You are strong.
- I know.
- Beautiful and confident.
- It actually felt good to-to go through that
but I kind of want something a little bit more personalized.
I feel like, you know me better than anybody
and so you'll be able to like
you understand my insecurities, the things that I go through
- and also your values, like you value things
like relationships and quality of relationships.
- Yeah. So help me write affirmation
and then I'm gonna do it.
- Your not going to look, right?
- Nope.
- [Matt] You feel good about them?
- Yeah, I think they're really good.
- [Matt] Great.
- Yep, I put a lot of thought into them.
- [Matt] Give me, thank you.
Now I've got an audience for my affirmation.
That's all right. You can just stand out of frame.
I have never done a daily affirmation
with an audience before, so okay, here we go.
- [Natalie] Read it out loud.
- I'm trying.
I'm trying.
Okay, here we go.
Just because you have to shave your nose does not
mean you are not worthy.
There comes a day when you realize
that it's actually impossible to hum while holding your nose
and you're 100% okay with that.
That's like about acceptance.
That's like nice.
If avocados teach us anything
it's that you don't have to be rock hard to be delicious.
That's really beautiful.
And that's it.
Those are my daily affirmations now.
Yeah, you did a great job.
- [Natalie] Oh, good. I'm glad.
I might have to change these.
- No, you're welcome.
- (laughs) That's not how you hug.
So this video is brought to you by Storyblocks.
I use Storyblocks, demand driven library to
source high quality video clips for my own videos
and they are an absolute game changer.
In the past, when I needed a couple of shots
for a video I'd have to pay per clip,
but that was expensive.
Now with my Storyblocks
unlimited all access subscription plan.
I have unlimited access to over 1 million assets
including tons of high quality video footage.
And it's really affordable.
Here's a really cool thing
that Storyblocks recently did
they hired six content creators in the LGBTQIA+
community to help tell stories that are rarely ever told
especially when it comes to stock footage, by partnering
with creators and underrepresented communities
Storyblocks is helping to change the face of stock footage
which I think is pretty cool.
Go to storyblocks.com/mattdavella to learn more
and to sign up for an unlimited membership today
you can use the link down in the description below.
All right, so I think it's safe to say
that Natalie's daily affirmations aren't gonna really work
out for me.
And so I want to find some daily affirmations
that really resonate with me to wrap up
this experiment and to see
if it really can make a positive change in my life.
And so what I'm going to do is
because I don't want to just write these from scratch.
I'm not super confident
that I'll be able to do a good job myself.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to look
up my personality type online.
Now this isn't something that's necessarily backed
by science but I have found it to be pretty accurate
in the past.
The personality types that I typically look at
are called Enneagrams.
And so I think there are like nine types
of Enneagrams and I find that I resonate most with type one.
The type one Enneagram is
defines somebody that's rational and idealistic, principled,
purposeful, self-controlled, and perfectionist.
So right there, you can already see
that that pretty much aligns with my personality.
(typing)
All right,
so I'm all wrapped up with my new daily affirmations.
What I've done is I've pulled some new ones using
my Enneagram type one here.
I've also pulled some of my favorites from the old one
that I was doing.
I didn't take any of Nat's, not even happy wife, happy life.
And I also did write a couple original ones that I
didn't see there, but I was inspired by-by what
I read online to make a new one.
And so let me read a couple of these to you
that I think maybe resonate the most with me.
I release my need for control.
I am perfect, even in all my imperfections,
I set reasonable expectations with myself.
I think that's a really big one.
I have enough to be happy in this moment.
That's-that's one that's that I-that I wrote
that's definitely deeply rooted in minimalism and really
figuring out how much is enough for you.
No matter how long you've been practicing minimalism,
intentionality, whatever.
This is something you constantly have to remind yourself
that you are enough and you have enough.
And so I'm going to give a crack at this
the new daily affirmations
and see how these go for the next couple of days.
Heading into this experiment
I wanted to hate it.
I really did.
I had a bias going into this.
I'm not going to lie.
I thought daily affirmations were dumb.
They were cliche.
And I was certain that there was no way
that it was going to help me and I was actually wrong.
You know, I'm very hesitant to-to
jump on the bandwagon when it comes
to any of these practices in self-development
or wellness that are kind of woo, woo, spiritual
and really don't have grounding in science.
They're things that are all about finding your truth
versus the actual truth and you know what to each their own
you know, if something works for you, that's great.
But the whole point of this experiment is to
try these things that I really have an adverse reaction to.
And so, yeah, I actually found
out that daily affirmations were really beneficial
and for three main reasons.
So first it really helps to develop self-awareness,
self-awareness is such a critical skill.
It's one of those underlying traits that
if you build it can help so many other areas of your life
and it can help to really build strong relationships
with others.
When you know yourself first
when you know the things that you're thinking
those negative thought patterns that you go down over
and over again, when you wake up to them
and-and for me that has usually been through meditation
it really allows you to get clear
on what you need to work on.
What are the mistakes that you keep making
over and over again?,
What's preventing you from being happy?
And the second area where I found it help was
that it really allows you to be vulnerable
and I think even committing to a practice like this
where you would typically not do it
because of what you think others might think of you
it allows you to, to start to chip away
at your ego a little bit
as you saw from this experiment in the very beginning
the first daily affirmation that I read to myself
I really had to kind of break
down some walls in myself to be able to try this
and so I think anything that breaks
down those walls that allows you to be more
vulnerable is a good thing.
And finally, I'd say that
because you're gaining greater self-awareness
it does allow you to stop yourself
from thinking negative thoughts.
Now it doesn't completely get rid of it, just as meditation
doesn't completely rid yourself
of some toxic thoughts and beliefs about yourself.
It does get you to start moving in that direction.
It takes a whole lot of work.
And I don't think just reading something
into a mirror is going to magically change who you are
but I do think it is a great first step.
If you're looking to make any self-development change,
you know, like everything within the self-development world
daily affirmations is not a magic bullet.
It's not something that's going to completely
radically change your life
but should you knock it or should you try it?
I definitely think you should try it.
I think you should give it a go, you know,
do a little bit of research for yourself.
Try it for a week, you know, a week such a simple experiment
that you may be able to gain some benefits from.
Now I would encourage you to do this privately.
That's just me personally.
I still find it embarrassing to do even in front of my wife
and so wait until everybody's outside of the house
clear your throat and give those daily affirmations a shot.