~Monday~ Being affirmed is an important part of keeping emotionally healthy, and recognizing affirmations is a lot like spotting “padiddles.” You know, as soon as you start looking for those cars with one headlight out, you see a bunch of them.
I remember when I was contemplating getting my next car and was hesitant about getting a white one, because I was afraid it would look dirty all the time. So, I decided to look for white cars to see how they looked in general. I remember thinking, “It’s probably not a good sign that I don’t see that many of them,” but as soon as I started looking for them, I saw a ton of ’em. But I digress. But in my own defense, it was with a smilie to make a point.
Although my blog is entitled: Digital Digressions: A Day in the Life, you may or may not have noticed that the URL is dailyafirmation.livejournal.com. It was no accident that I chose the “dailyafirmation” part of that URL 13 years ago when I started this blog. I chose it for two reasons:
- The “daily” part to encourage me to blog daily, and
- The “affirmation” part to encourage me to keep it positive and to look for affirmations in my life. Note: There’s only one “f” in the word in the URL, because that part of the URL could only be 15 characters long, so I left off that superfluous “f.”
And with that blogging philosophy, a funny thing happened along the affirmation trail.
For the first few months, I noticed the obvious kind of affirmations, the ones that were spoken, such as:
- “You make me laugh.”
- “You’re a nice guy.”
- “You’re smart.”
But as time went on, I began to recognize more subtle affirmations, those that were based in action as opposed to explicitly stated verbally, such as:
- Someone saying hello, especially when you didn’t even see them, and it would have been very easy for them to not have made the effort.
- Being invited to lunch with a group of people, especially if you didn’t even know about the lunch gathering, and it would have been just easy for them to not invite you.
- Someone confiding in you, or consulting you, about a very personal matter.
Only recently, I have begun to notice what I think of as “super affirmations,” which are ones that come from people you’ve known a long time and actually see pretty often, such as:
- “I can’t wait to see you.”
- “I miss seeing your face.”
- “I never get tired of watching you dance.”
Are you cognizant of the affirmations in your life? Which ones stand out to you? Are there any “super affirmations” in your life that come to mind after reading this?