Core exercise · 8 of 12
Visualisation
Yes / no, once a day
"Today/tomorrow is going to be a good day."
When I say this to myself, a tiny calm settles over me, suddenly and for no reason. Sometimes it's at the start of the day: in the morning I tell myself that the day ahead will pass well. Other times it's before bed: I tell myself that the sleep I'm about to get will be good, or that tomorrow will be a peaceful day. Whether the day turns out good or not, whether I sleep well or not, whether tomorrow is peaceful or not, whispering it soothes me in that moment and calms me down a notch. When I think about it: even if practising this moves my mental health by 0.1%, why wouldn't I do it, right? Maybe what I need is exactly that extra one in a thousand of support. And what if the day turned out awful anyway? I say "Oh well, not today; maybe tomorrow," let off a bit of swearing as the situation requires, take a deep breath, lift the load off my shoulders, set it to one side and leave that day behind. Does it actually stay behind? Sometimes. But what matters is performing the ritual, making the move. At the very least you know this: it's the universe's move now.
"This is my design."
Because by now I was disgusted by the "Ask, believe, receive!" formulas, over the years I found myself unable to think anything positive at all, asking "So what, am I never going to imagine anything again?" Instead of a hollow affirmation habit, I started imagining what I wanted the way a designer would, in full clarity and detail, as far as I could manage; imitating what I would feel once the wish had come true; observing what those feelings did in my body; and finally, in my mind, taking this template to the universe, a.k.a. the "chief designer", and submitting it. I said, "This is my design. I respectfully request that the necessary action be taken forthwith." Getting that responsibility off my back, plus the feeling of "I did what I could." after the effort I had put in, whether the thing came true or not, let me close the project file on that dream in peace. And once again I whispered the same line: "Your move."
Research
Research: Visualisation
Why hollow affirmations backfire, what detailed imagining does and does not do, and closing the file.
These notes are a starting point for the author's own reading; nothing here is medical advice.
The author's dislike of hollow affirmations has a study on its side: when people with low self-esteem repeated a positive statement about themselves, they felt worse, not better (Wood, Perunovic and Lee 2009). What he does instead, imagining the outcome in detail and then feeling it in the body, sits close to the research on fantasies and expectations: indulging in a positive fantasy on its own tends to lower effort, while thinking through the obstacles between here and there helps (Oettingen and Mayer 2002; Oettingen 2014). The quiet one-liner, "today is going to be a good day", is closer to self-affirmation than to affirmation in the self-help sense, and affirming what matters to you does reliably buffer stress (Cohen and Sherman 2014).
References
- Wood, J. V., Perunovic, W. Q. E., and Lee, J. W. (2009). Positive self-statements: Power for some, peril for others. Psychological Science.
- Oettingen, G., and Mayer, D. (2002). The motivating function of thinking about the future: Expectations versus fantasies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
- Oettingen, G. (2014). Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. Current.
- Cohen, G. L., and Sherman, D. K. (2014). The psychology of change: Self-affirmation and social psychological intervention. Annual Review of Psychology.
Notes last touched October 16, 2026