“Stop looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love – you have a treasure within that is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.”
~ Eckhart Tolle
Our focus this week was affirmations. Interestingly, many of the children did not know what an affirmation is or how it can be used. So, it was useful to start right at the beginning and discuss what an affirmation actually is.
Simply put, an affirmation is a positive word or short sentence that one can repeat to yourselves to help you feel happy and confident. A great analogy that children can relate to, is to explain that if they want to grow up healthy and strong, they need to eat healthy foods to nourish their bodies. In the same way, they can repeat affirmations to themselves so that they can grow up feeling happy and confident inside. Affirmations are like healthy foods for feelings!
Affirmations for children are most effective when they are short and easy to remember. So, we did some brain storming and came up with a few of the examples below:
• I am loved
• I am important
• I am kind
• I am healthy
• I am calm
• I am safe
• I am brave
• I am friendly
• I am helpful
• I am generous
• I am awesome
• I am caring
It is important to remind a child, that although an affirmation can reinforce an existing inner quality, such as “I am kind”, it can also be the seed of a quality that the child wishes to grow within themselves, such as “I am brave”.
The children then each chose one affirmation to write out on a card. They decorated their cards and took them home to use as a reminder to repeat their chosen affirmation once a day until their next Mindful Minis lesson. And hopefully, to repeat it for many more days after that as well!
Included in the lessons this week was also a guided visualisation. I chose “Planting Seeds” from the album “Mindful Moments for Minis” because it is a lovely meditation about planting seeds of calm, joy and peace in one’s inner garden. It fitted in well with the theme of positive affirmations.
So, hopefully, the lessons this week help the children to know they have…. a treasure within that is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.