Free Shipping Over £50 (UK), £70 (Rest of World)
Creative affirmations are the last of the activities I mentioned that I’ve adopted after reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I’ve left talking about it until the end as it feels a bit… ‘woo-woo’ and consequently I’m less confident writing about it than I am Morning Pages or Artist Dates. But, here we go.
A creative affirmation is a brief exercise where you reflect on a positive, creative aspect of your values, identity, or traits. It generally involves writing out whatever it is about your creativity that you need to hear. As Julia says:
“An affirmation is a positive statement of (positive) belief, and if we can become one-tenth as good at positive self-talk as we are at negative self-talk, we will notice an enormous change. “
The idea is that doing this writing helps develop or reinforce your belief in your creative self, providing a counterpoint to the voice in your head that is critical or undermines your creative efforts. In her book, Julia calls that voice your Censor, although I think of it as the Inner Critic.
The Inner Critic often sounds like the voices you picked up and internalised as a child – parents, teachers, friends, etc – that give voice to the part of your psyche that tries to protect you by limiting the ‘risky’ things you do. Unfortunately, for many of us, what it considers ‘risky’ can extend to seemingly harmless activities like simply drawing a picture. It can be crippling for our creativity.
The idea is that creative affirmations provide a regular counterpoint to your Inner Critic. This can mean giving yourself permission to do the things you dream of. It can also mean you feel a reduced need to seek external validation, approval from others, which leads you away from your internal creative compass and towards things that are closer to what you think other people would approve of or like.
This is entirely up to you. It depends on what it is that you, specifically, need to hear. Julia says of them:
Affirmations help achieve a sense of safety and hope. When we first start working with affirmations, they may feel dumb. Hokey. Embarrassing. Isn’t this interesting? We can easily, and without embarrassment, bludgeon ourselves with negative affirmations: “I’m not gifted enough/not clever enough/not original enough/not young enough …” But saying nice things about ourselves is notoriously hard to do. It feels pretty awful at first. Try these and see if they don’t sound hopelessly syrupy: “I deserve love.” “I deserve fair pay.” “I deserve a rewarding creative life.” “I am a brilliant and successful artist.” “I have rich creative talents.” “I am competent and confident in my creative work.”
A key way to zero in on the kinds of creative affirmation that would be most useful for you is to consider your negative self-talk (“blurts”) and turn it on its head, e.g.
“I, Fred, am un-talented and phony” might be converted to the affirmation “I, Fred, am genuinely talented.”
If you’re stuck for ideas you can try out some of the ones below which are provided in the book and see if any resonate, or spark ideas for your own creative affirmations.:
Write your creative affirmations out regularly: I try to write mine three times, daily, as part of my Morning Pages . I’ve found this more helpful than writing it out and then placing it somewhere I will see it or (cringe of all cringe) saying it out loud while looking at myself in the mirror.
The act of writing helps things go into my brain (and most people’s brains for that matter), so I figure why not write it repeatedly? Even on days when I’m not sure I really do believe my affirmation, I write it out anyway. I believe it helps.
And that’s all there really is to ‘doing it’, but if you want to dig into this a bit deeper…
There’s a strong comedy theme making fun of positive affirmations, poking fun at people staring at themselves in the mirror and telling themselves good things about themselves. It’s a humour trope poking fun at the notion that you can magically change who you are by simply telling yourself this new reality is true.
So, it does feel a bit cringey to write a blog post about this sort of thing. But I had a look into the science behind it and there has been research over the last twenty years looking at whether affirmations cause anything useful to happen in the brain (they can do) and if they actually work (they can do).
But, for positive or creative affirmations to be successful, there are three key elements. They should be:
They activate important parts of your brain: Brain scan studies show that affirming core values activates the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. These brain areas process feelings of value and self-worth, likely allowing you to reframe threats and stressors by reinforcing a stable and positive self-image.
They reduce the impact of stress on your brain: Self-affirmations also buffer the negative effects of stress on cognitive performance, allowing you to maintain problem-solving abilities under pressure
They help you change your behaviour: Affirmations allow you to be more open to learning from mistakes, which ultimately improves whatever you are trying to improve. They make you better at problem-solving under pressure. They can also help nudge you towards making healthier choices.
Interested in reading more?
https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2025/10/self-affirmations-well-being
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-clarity/202511/the-science-behind-self-affirmations
