From the Daily Affirmations app. Every affirmation quoted on this page is in the app, word for word.Quick answer: a realistic affirmation is one you can say without arguing with yourself. In a 2009 experiment, people who rated themselves less favorably on a questionnaire felt worse after repeating “I’m a lovable person” (Wood, Perunovic & Lee). A 2020 replication did not find that effect (Flynn & Bordieri). Either way, the fix doesn’t depend on the study: lower the claim until it’s true today: “I can get through today” is a line you can still say at 2am; “everything always works out for me” is a line you have to defend.
Why an affirmation can feel like a lie
You say “I am confident” into the mirror and something in you answers: no, you’re not. That is what people mean when they say affirmations feel like lies, and that answer is the problem. A statement that sits far from what you believe doesn’t replace the belief; it summons the rebuttal, and the rebuttal is what you end up rehearsing.
That is close to what Joanne Wood and her colleagues found in 2009. First they surveyed people and confirmed the obvious: positive self-statements are widely used and widely believed to work. Then they ran two experiments. In the first, participants who rated themselves less favorably felt worse after repeating “I’m a lovable person” than those who did not repeat it. In the second, being told to focus only on how the statement was true left them worse off than being asked to think about how it was both true and not true. Participants who rated themselves more favorably felt better. The paper’s title says it: “Positive Self-Statements: Power for Some, Peril for Others” (Wood, Perunovic & Lee, 2009). The line worth keeping is the authors’ own conclusion: these statements may benefit some people and backfire when they are far from what a person believes about themselves.
Eleven years later, Maureen Flynn and Michael Bordieri ran the study again, in two experiments with larger samples. They found no difference between conditions, whether participants rated themselves high or low (Flynn & Bordieri, 2020). So the warning is not settled. We still write lines you can agree with, for a plainer reason: a line you have to argue with is harder to say.
One detail in that study matters more than the headline. The group allowed to consider both sides (this is true, and this is also not true) did better than the group told to focus only on how it was true. Room to disagree is what keeps an affirmation from turning into an argument.
What “realistic” means in practice
Three tests, in the order we apply them when we write for the app:
Could you check it today? “I’m allowed to be in bed at 11am” is easy to verify at 11am. “I have endless energy” is not, and on a no-energy day your body will file the objection for you.
Is it permission or a next step? Verdicts about who you are (“I am unstoppable,” “I am perfect”) are exactly the kind of statement the 2009 study tested. Permission (“The dishes can wait. So can I.”) and small claims (“I count down the hours and still keep my dignity.”) ask you to accept something small, and small is easy to accept.
Would you say it to a friend in the same spot? You would not tell a friend at 2am that everything always works out. You might tell them they don’t have to carry tomorrow tonight.
Ten lines that pass the test
I can be anxious and still be okay.
I don’t need to carry the day into the night.
My body is not failing. It’s signaling.
The dishes can wait. So can I.
I’m allowed to be in bed at 11am.
I can be tired and still deserve respect.
I count down the hours and still keep my dignity.
Even the people I admire doubt themselves sometimes.
My work is real, even when I doubt it.
I remind myself: this is intense, not permanent.
From the app’s 2AM thoughts, Overcome fatigue, Recover from burnout, Deal with job burnout, Imposter syndrome, and Relieve panic attacks categories. Nothing was rewritten for this page.
Make it stick: pick the line you can say without flinching, not the one you wish were true. If a line makes you argue, that’s your answer. Step it down until the arguing stops.
But isn’t there research saying affirmations work?
There is, and it’s about something else. The strongest results belong to self-affirmation as psychologists use the term: brief exercises in which people write about their core values; these have improved outcomes in education and health when done at the right moment, sometimes with effects that last months (Cohen & Sherman, 2014). Repeating “I am confident” ten times is a different activity. The word covers two practices, and the encouraging evidence mostly belongs to the first.
The everyday practice, a line you read when you pick up your phone, is what we build. We built it around one rule: each category is written for a specific situation, in words a person in that situation could plausibly say. That’s the whole idea behind the app.
Frequently asked
Why don’t affirmations work for me?
Often because the statement is too far from what you believe; a claim you can’t agree with can leave you rehearsing the counterargument. A 2009 study found that people who rated themselves less favorably felt worse after repeating “I’m a lovable person” (Wood, Perunovic & Lee); a 2020 replication did not find the same effect (Flynn & Bordieri). Lower the claim until it’s true today: start from “I can be anxious and still be okay.”
Can affirmations make you feel worse?
The evidence is mixed. Wood and colleagues (2009) found that participants who rated themselves less favorably felt worse after repeating “I’m a lovable person” than those who didn’t repeat it. A 2020 replication with two larger experiments did not find that effect (Flynn & Bordieri). If a line makes you feel worse, you don’t need a study to drop it: pick one you can agree with.
What are realistic affirmations?
Lines you can say without arguing with yourself. Three tests: you could check it today; it describes permission or a next step rather than a verdict on who you are; you would say it to a friend in the same spot. “The dishes can wait. So can I.” passes all three. “Everything always works out for me” fails the first.
Do affirmations work at all?
It depends on what you mean by the word. The research with the strongest results, reviewed by Cohen and Sherman in 2014, is about self-affirmation: writing about your core values, which has improved education and health outcomes when done at the right moment. Repeating positive statements about yourself is a different practice, and that is the practice Wood and colleagues tested in 2009 and Flynn and Bordieri retested in 2020. The everyday version works best when the statement is believable and tied to the moment you’re in.
Is there an affirmations app with realistic affirmations?
Daily Affirmations and Widgets (iOS and Android) is built around this idea: every category is written for a specific situation, in lines you can say on a hard day, such as “My body is not failing. It’s signaling.” for days with no energy or “I don’t have to carry tomorrow today” for 2am thoughts. All ten lines on this page are from the app, word for word.
Affirmations are a daily tool, not a treatment. If you have felt bad about yourself for months, talk to a professional: that kind of support will do more than any single line.
All situations — the full list of categories, one page each.
About. These collections come from
Daily Affirmations and Widgets,
an app with dedicated affirmation categories for specific situations — No Energy Today, Job Burnout, 2AM Thoughts,
Overthinking, Panic Attacks, Money Stress — plus Lock Screen and Home Screen widgets.
Every line on this page is reproduced word for word from the app.
