We kind of know that when we feel bad about ourselves, saying I'm great doesn't help because now we just feel like we're lying to ourselves.

Self-affirmation is not that.

Self-affirmation is this.

If I am the type of person that feels powerless inside of myself, I know that as you've described, there's things that I can do to tell a different story to myself publicly and privately.

Is this a form of practice that one has to do?

Yes.

Is there like I go to the gym and I...

Some of my favorite work in social psychology is on what's called self-affirmation theory.

When people think of self-affirmation, they think of someone looking in a mirror saying, I'm awesome.

I'm the best.

I'm going to win.

I'm a winner.

We kind of know that when we feel bad about ourselves, saying I'm great doesn't help because now we just feel like we're lying to ourselves.

So we feel bad already and now we're like, well I feel bad and I'm a So self-affirmation is not that.

Self-affirmation is this.

There are hundreds of experiments now on self-affirmation.

They have people list the top two or three values or qualities that make them who they are.

Like if I took that value or quality away from you, you would say I'm just no longer myself.

Like you are just taking a piece of me away.

They then have them kind of one paragraph about a time when they expressed it and another maybe about how it felt to express it.

That is it.

That's the exercise.

They then have them do difficult things like take a difficult math test, for example, or do a debate, you know, be in a debate competition or something challenging that's unrelated, right?

So if say I said I value music, if you took the experience of myself and then I did a math test, I would do better on the math test.

After doing that self-affirmation exercise, I would be likely to, on average, people perform better.

They also even show decreases in levels of stress hormones like epinephrine.

So the idea is that you're anchoring yourself in who you are and what you're doing is reminding yourself that no matter what happens on that math test, you're still going to be that person when you walk out.

And so that math test becomes less important, which ironically or paradoxically makes you do better on it.

And so I think that's a really good start is to just spend time kind of journaling about who are you, what do you value, but really what are those qualities that make you who you are to you, not to others, not how would others describe you.