Most affirmations are written by people who have never said the affirmation out loud in a mirror at 6am after sleeping badly.
I am abundant. I am worthy. I am a magnet for joy. These are nice. They are also obvious lies, and saying an obvious lie to yourself before coffee is a strange way to begin a day. The brain notices. It is not impressed.
The honest affirmation is the one that starts the way an affirmation is supposed to start, then admits something true halfway through. Something the lie wouldn’t admit. The format does not work by mocking the genre. It works by being more truthful than the genre allows.
Here are seven of the thirty.
I am enough. I am also tired. Both can be true.
Slow progress is still progress. So is no progress. Today’s plan is no progress.
I do not have to fix everyone. This is news I am still receiving in real time.
I am calm. I am centred. I have not yet checked my email today, which is the only reason this is true.
I do not need coffee to function. I do, however, need everyone to stop offering it to me at 8am.
My value does not depend on productivity. My rent, however, does.
My best is sometimes a single load of washing and a long stare at the kettle.
Why the format works
A normal affirmation pretends the reader is already where the affirmation says they are. The premise is fake-it-til-you-make-it. The brain rejects it. We have known this for decades. There is research. The studies show that positive affirmations work for people who already believe the affirmation and backfire on people who don’t.
A Disappointing Affirmation does the opposite. It meets the reader exactly where they are, then nudges them a quarter-step forward. The first half of the sentence is the standard affirmation. The second half is the truth. The combination is funnier than either part on its own, which is the engine. Humour bypasses the part of the brain that rejects the lie. The reader takes the affirmation seriously because the punchline made them laugh.
That is the entire device. There is no five-step framework. There are just thirty of them.
Where they came from
They came from writing a self-help book in a voice that did not believe in five-step frameworks. The book is Duck Yeah. It is the rebuild book in the Waddle Forward series. The voice has the same shape as the affirmations because the affirmations are off-cuts from the book, edited down to one line each.
People started screenshotting them. People started reading them in voices that were not mine, which is when a phrase has stopped being a private thing and started being a public one. So we made the booklet.
The booklet
Thirty Disappointing Affirmations in an A5 PDF. Free. Yours forever. We give it to anyone who joins The Flock, which is the Monday email list. You get the booklet, you get a sample chapter from one of the books, you get one email every Monday. Unsubscribe is one click. The ducks are tired too, they get it.
If you want to read all thirty, sign up below.
If you do not, save the seven above on your phone. Send the kettle one to whichever friend needs it. That is the entire marketing plan.
Duck Yeah
Build a Life You Actually Like Living. A Witty Guide to Getting Unstuck, Rebuilding Your Life, and Actually Enjoying Your Life Again.
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