The purpose of affirmations is to change our perspective of ourselves. Many of us are already telling ourselves who we are with cognitive distortions. We constantly replay phrases to ourselves in our minds where we are telling ourselves who we are. Some common examples are "I'm so stupid", "I'm no good at anything", "no one likes me", "I could never do that", "I can't do anything right", "I will never be happy", "everything is always my fault", and so on and so forth.
Simply put affirmations are a conscious choice to change our perspective of ourselves using positive phrases instead of the self-defeating and self-harming phrases that lead to isolation and desperation. It is the decision to change what we believe about ourselves for the better, so we are able to live happier and more fulfilling lives. The issue we see with affirmations is we aren't able to see the effects of them immediately and sometimes it may take months or years for us to notice any effect. For those of us who try affirmations, we more than likely will give up after a short period of time not having seen an effect.
If you are the type of person who has been using cognitive distortions your entire life and have a negative perspective of yourself. Using affirmations a few times isn't going to make up for a lifetime of you telling yourself the opposite. If you are always telling yourself about how "stupid" you are, that has become a belief about yourself that you hold dear, that belief has become somewhat of a comfort to you. You may find that hard to believe, that you find the fact that you tell yourself that you're stupid is comforting to you, but we all find comfort in consistency. Many of us don't like change, so changing our own beliefs can be uncomfortable and even terrifying for some. If we don't want to be "stupid" anymore and we decide to make that change, the only way to do that is to change our belief about ourselves. We do that by telling ourselves what we want to believe and that is where affirmations come into play.
We change our belief that we are "stupid" by simply repeating "I am smart" every chance we get. The more we do it, the more we will believe it. If we only tell ourselves once a day "I am smart" but inside our mind we are still repeating "I'm so stupid" a dozen times a day, that one time we tell ourselves "I am smart" is competing against all those "I'm so stupid" thoughts. The absolute best method to overcoming the "I'm so stupid" thought is to counter it with "I am smart" every single time it is thought. We can even go above and beyond that and add the affirmation every hour on the hour, every day until eventually our belief that "I'm so stupid" inevitably changes to "I am smart". A time will come when you will no longer need the affirmation since your belief will change, you will truly believe that you are smart and will no longer believe that you are stupid.
We hold within us the ability and the power to believe anything we want to about ourselves. We see it all around us every day, where someone believes themselves to be something with which no one else believes them to be. You choose what you believe about yourself, you choose who you are. You do so by telling yourself what you believe and who you are. If you want to change what you believe or who you are, simply change what you tell yourself.
Some of us spend our entire lives reinforcing our false beliefs about ourselves by taking on the identity of that false belief. It can be anything from being a "victim" to being "sick" to having "misery" or "drama". When we believe something about ourselves to be true, we attract people and situations into our lives in order to reinforce the belief. We don't like to have our beliefs challenged so we ignore things that contain evidence to the contrary of our beliefs. If someone believes that everyone is against them, and their identity has become a "victim" they will refuse to acknowledge any evidence to the contrary. They could have everything they ever wanted, and everything could go perfectly in their life, and they will still find a way to be a "victim" through it all.
Most of us know or have known someone like this. Someone who is never happy with anything in life and who always finds something to complain about, all the while we're trying to tell them about all the good things that they have if they would only open their eyes and look. They literally cannot see any good in their life, they will not allow themselves to. If they were to see the good in their life, the identity of "victim" would go out the window. Since they hold that identity so dear, they wouldn't know who they were without it and that is a truly terrifying concept, to not know who you are.
We don't have to lose our identity in order to change it. We can transform our identity. Someone who has the identity of "victim" can change it to the identity of "hero" or "survivor" or "warrior" or whatever term they prefer. The truth is we don't change unless we want to. If someone is a "victim" it's only because they choose to be and there is nothing anyone can do to change that. Love and Peace!