Word Affirmations

I don't know about all of you, but I'm stressed out. The end of the school year always brings on so much stress. Not only am I worrying about finals, but I have to worry about moving all my stuff out of my dorm room (I honestly don't know how we're going to get my futon out of the room!). I'm also worrying about Rome, which is a little ridiculous. It'll be my first time going on a plane all by myself, and I'm going all the way to Europe. Not only that, but I only know one another person from my school over there. I really am bad at meeting new people. Sigh.

Via

Anyhow, the point of this post is to tell people how I deal with stress: through word affirmations. I've been known to worry excessively over things ever since I was a kid. I think it's genetic, since my parents are worry-warts too. One day my mom printed out a list of adjectives that she thought described me: one for every letter of the alphabet. Every night before she tucked me into bed, she'd make me say one of the words to myself. We'd go through the whole list over and over again, highlighting the words we completed with different colored markers each time.

I know, it sounds cheesy, but it really works. Seriously, right now, I want you to sit down and make a list of 26 adjectives, each corresponding with a letter of the alphabet (xylophonic is the only good "x" adjective there is, I'm warning you now).

Here's a list of the ones I just came up with:

*Amazing*Beautiful*Creative*Daring*Energetic*Fun*Gentle*Happy*Ingenious*Joyful*Keen*Loving*Meritorious*Nice*Outstanding*Preppy!*Quaint*Radient*Smart*Talented*Unique*Veracious*Witty*
Xylophonic*Young*Zealous

Because I'm a visual learner, I went to tagxedo.com, which made this funky little word cloud out of the 26 words I chose. It was really a lot of fun: you can customize the colors, the shape of the word cloud, etc.

Every night before you go to bed (or whenever you're stressed out, really) pick one of your adjectives and think of a time when you exemplified that adjective. I'm sure you can come up with a situation, and it'll give you a smile. If you do this every night, it eventually becomes a routine and gives you just a minute of positive thinking in your day.

Yes, I know, thinking of the adjective "amazing" tonight before I go to bed won't make my upcoming organic chemistry final any easier. But maybe, through repetition, I'll start believing that I am amazing: I can pass those finals and I can go to Rome by myself. We're human beings: we underestimate ourselves and never give ourselves enough credit. Practices like this can help boost our confidence just a bit.

P.S. I also made a word bubble out of the most-used words on my blog! Check it out.