hey guys so this was a big week for politics of course there was the debate between former president Donald Trump and vice president kamla Harris if you want to dive in more on the reactions to the debate performances we've got a new episode of The Campaign moment coming out today and that episode it's only going to be available on our separate podcast the campaign moment so go into your podcast app find the campaign moment and get that episode queued up for your weekend listening in the me time here on post reports we've got something different today a show about affirmations and it comes to us from another Washington Post podcast called try this try this is a series of audio courses it's hosted by my colleague Christina Quinn and let me tell you as someone who gets to work with Christina she is delightful she is hilarious she is someone that you want to spend time with Christina loves life hacks and she loves helping people learn how to improve their lives and that brings us back to affirmations the subject of the latest try this course affirmations are the I am statements that you're supposed to say to yourself in moments of stress or self-doubt and Christina has a whole new framing on why affirmations work and how to make them work for you so after a busy news week it felt like this would be a nice way to end the week we're going to play you the first part of that course today and after you listen be sure to follow try this and your podcast app okay here we go hey welcome to try this from The Washington Post try this is a series of audio courses to help you take on common challenges and learn something new without having to make a big time commitment I'm Christina Quinn I'm a journalist at the post and I'll be learning with you because I too love a a solid affirming reminder that I'm smart and I'm strong affirm the affirms if you're new to try this here's how this will work each try this course has anywhere from 2 to five classes which is just a fancy way of saying two to five episodes in this course we'll have two classes diving into the world of affirmations first we'll figure out exactly how these phrases or beliefs can work and even lower stress and in the next class we'll dig into how you can tell whether affirmations are wor working and more tips for Success okay class is in session let's try [Music] this an affirmation is a statement of positive self reflection that highlights a valued aspect of who we are or in most cases who we perceive ourselves to be and that's Natalie datillo Ryan a clinical Psy psychologist outside of Boston she does a lot of affirmation work with her clients and teaches psychology at Harvard Medical School so I wanted her to teach me and you what it means to use a self-affirmation that can actually be helpful they could sound um declarative like I am capable I am loving I am deserving of Joy they could also be aspirational in the sense that I want to be the type of person who feels capable or I want to be the type of person who receives love well the idea of using affirmations as a psychological tool emerged from a theory established in the'80s at Stanford University that people want to view themselves as morally good and competent when these views are threatened like when you receive criticism or get a bad grade affirming things you value can Shore up your confidence we are motivated to protect our sense of self our sense of selfworth at this sort of very basic level it's a way to deal with the daytoday or in particular stressful situations in a way that's less reactive you're not swayed so much in One Direction or the other you're not too hot or too cold in fact you may pass through situations in a much more unaffected way than if you hadn't had a strengthened system in place before for an affirmation to really work it has to reflect something meaningful to you and it doesn't have to be tailored to stressful situations the Only Rule is that it must be personal now how would somebody start doing affirmations cuz I think for some people there's it may be a big leap to take from like doing it in your head to saying it out loud and do you think that there's definitely a difference like it makes a difference to say something out loud versus just saying it to yourself in your head so I think there's a couple of different ways that you could practice affirmations I actually think what makes the biggest difference is writing them down and the goal is to have them be believable so just saying something about yourself that you don't actually believe doesn't work it doesn't serve the purpose of the affirmation right because then because an affirmation should essentially be supporting something you already believe as opposed to convincing yourself of something that perhaps you are not yes that is absolutely true it could backfire in that case Natalie says one helpful approach to identifying your affirmations is to write a journal entry or letter about what's important to you there is some calling to mind of things about you or your life that you are proud of or that you value for a lot of people this is their relationships and so what you might do is spend a little bit of time journaling about what's important to you about your relationships what you've done lately to promote those relationships um reminding yourself of how you know good you are of a friend or a partner or a colleague and you know look for some specific examples to to back that up and Natalie says the way in which you spell this out is really important I always recommend people write uh with their hand when it comes to journaling I know opening up a word doc and typing out the this is is convenient and easy but it doesn't serve the the same purpose why is that um well we do a lot of editing it's easier to edit when we're typing and we get too caught up in having it sound right or having the grammar be correct and but when we are writing it's not as easy to go back and change what we just wrote so you almost have to commit to it a little bit differently and there's also some happening neurologically like in your brain so you're activating more centers of the brain so your motor centers your emotion centers your logic centers and a well-connected brain is a healthy brain so the more of those centers we can connect in an activity the better and if you need a little more Direction here's something else you can try I'll have people give me a list of 50 things about themselves starting with the sentence stem I am just fill in the blank some people it's easy some people that's quite the challenge and I will not give them a whole lot of guidance around it because I think it's helpful for people to identify what it is that they will claim about yourself who I am this is who I am um and start there and this is not necessarily the aspirational I AMS this is right now today making this list can reveal a lot about your values what's important to you you're not going to write it down if you're not willing to claim it so that's an important part of the exercise that I don't tell people how to fill it in um so some people will um assume that I want them to write positive things about themselves I don't necessarily want I just want them to start with who you are one way is to start listing your roles I am a mother I am a sister I am a daughter I am a friend characteristics I am tall I am brunette and then that also leads into these other ideas about yourself that you hold true I am committed I am dedicated I am determined I am persistent you could set it up like I am a person who you know I'm a person who does this I a person who likes this I a person who appreciates this X Y and Z so you can take some liberties with that um but it is it's very revealing and it's a great place to start identifying and writing down Who You Are hard to get to your values not only strengthens your beliefs something else is happening when you take the time to acknowledge what really matters to you in fact a lot is happening inside that brain of yours when you start using affirmations we'll find out what right after the [Music] break okay psychologist Natalie datillo Ryan laid out what an affirmation is and how to begin to shore up what your values are now we're going to hear why self-affirmations can be such an important tool the study of self-affirmations for Stress Management has gained a lot of momentum in the past couple of decades and over that time this researcher has been stressing people out all in the name of science or as he puts it I study what makes people well and you know what makes people resilient under dress David Creswell is a Psychology and Neuroscience professor at Carnegie melon University he's also the director of the school's Health and Human Performance lab where they study Stress Management strategies and interventions Creswell and his team have conducted studies over the years that use saliva and urine samples they've used those samples to evaluate what happens when someone uses an affirmation before doing a challenging task saliva and urine are used because they show levels of cortisol a hormone that is released during stress here's what they found just thinking about an important personal value for a couple of minutes before they went into this really difficult stressful task changed their stress hormone responses they had reduced cortisol responses to to this task and so really showed that thinking about in personal value sort of inoculates you against now this really threatening situation for this Al in 2016 creswell's Health and Human Performance lab leveled up their work by peering Inside the Mind using brain scans you can imagine a a big doughnut-shaped magnet where we sort of slide your head inside the dnut Hole uh take 3D snapshots of your brain and the activity in your brain while you're in there before sticking their Noggin into these fancy scanners participants were divided into two groups in one group let's call them the self-affirmation group participants ranked five personal values art religion science social issues politics in order of importance in the second group The non- affirmation group participants were asked to rank a list of five attributes of a toaster in order of importance that they believed an average college student would rank them yes a toaster as in a machine that turns bread into toasted bread so if you're in the self-affirmation group you're weighing the value of Art and religion in your life in the non-a affirmation group you're considering what someone else might like in a toaster is it color slice capacity you get the idea next both groups brains were scanned and crestwell and his team saw meaningful differences in brain activity thinking about something personally meaningful to you in an affirmation activity really activates the brain's reward system same reward system that turns on during uh really yummy food or sex uh affirmations seem to turn on this brain reward system as well really suggesting that these moments of sort of thinking about important personal values really is sort of turning on the brain's reward system personal values for the win toaster on the other hand did not turn on the brains reward system but hey toasters don't you go changing creswell's team at the health and human performance lab did a follow-up study in 2020 that replicated these results and they're hopeful these findings demonstrate that affirmations could turn down people's stress responses by turning on the brain's reward system we're seeing evidence that's consistent with that and uh we've got a couple of studies now that show that self-affirmation activities turn on the ventral striatum in the brain one of the sort of core regions in the brain's reward system and that over time turning on that kind of reward circuitry really might matter for sort of promoting stress resilience and health so it it sounds like basically like thinking good thoughts the act of just doing that in and of itself is a reward to our brain yeah I think it's more than just thinking good things because a lot of our control conditions we still have people think about things that they like but they're not really important personal values per se and we don't see the same type of brain reward response to those so I really think it's thinking about something that you personally care about deeply that's what seems to it in terms of turning on the the brains reward system so that could be something like I am a caring and loving mother and daughter and spouse yeah and I I love playing pickle ball you know um I even think that some of these things that are about personal Hobbies or activities that you care about can really turn on the brains reward system I love the idea of I love playing pickleball as a self-affirmation just cuz like I think when we think of self-affirmations we think of like okay there's like a value system right it's kind of like you know I'm a good friend you know I can do hard things but I love the idea of being like I love pickle ball yeah is that a good thought or what at least for some people um no was that a good thought in the affirmation sense or was that just like a good thought in general is that was that part of the control well that's the thing is I think it really depends on the person so if for me as someone who plays a lot of pickleball and and I love it you know that is going to turn on the brains reward system but for you who may not play pickle ball that's not going to do it um so it really has to be yolked to things that are sort of central to your self-concept things that you really care about so now I feel it kind of like a jerk because I was laughing at something that is very important to you as a value system I'm sorry but that speaks to the the power of these affirmations that they're really linked to you know features of what what are sort of central to your self-concept [Music] as the old saying goes one man's affirmation is another one's control variable quick recap self-affirmations help buffer stress and can make you emotionally and mentally stronger keep it personal your affirmations must be rooted in values that are very important to you start writing make a 50 things about me list starting with I am or write a journal entry or letter about what you care about and don't forget to back up your beliefs with examples either you've got the receipts or it never happened up next in our second and final class on how to make affirmations work for you we go a little deeper into the effects of affirmations and when we know they're working we'll hear more from Natalie datillo Ryan and learn how to use affirmations to change your behavior if you're listening to this the week we released class one then our second class will be out for you next Tuesday but you can hear it right now and add free with a subscription to the post if you already have one great just look for the Washington Post channel in apple podcasts if you don't yet have a subscription you can subscribe to The Washington Post through the link in our show notes or at washingtonpost.com ssubscribe thanks for listening and I'll meet you in class 2