Feeling Stressed As 2026 Gets Underway? Here Are 6 Ways To Use Affirmations For Easing Anxiety
Mindful mantras can help interrupt a cycle of worry in the moment, creating more calm and better regulation of your nervous system.
While some worries may alert us to what we need to prioritize or take healthy action on, other worries are repetitive rabbit holes we get lost in, making anxiety worse. Use the following tips to create healing affirmations to help you feel more comforted, inspired, and less anxious this year.
Get clear on what you’d like for 2026
Do you want to experience more support, abundance, love, security, healing, peace, or adventure? Maybe you’d like to be of service even more or feel even more connected in general. Or perhaps you want more space to focus on self-care.
Sometimes simply getting clear on what you want can lower anxiety. An affirmation like “I’m welcoming more support into my life this year” helps you stay focused on what’s currently most important to you.
Feeling scattered can increase anxiety, so work with an affirmation to give your mind something gentle and empowering to focus on.
Keep your affirmations general to remain open & flexible
Having too narrow a vision of how things might manifest for you this year can be anxiety-producing by placing pressure on events and circumstances to go a certain way. So an affirmation like, “I’m finding a new job this month that pays more than my last job with a better title and in my dream city,” is quite specific and perhaps too restrictive.
You might instead try, “I’m open to a new job that’s an ideal fit for me right now.” Life is unscripted, so leaving room for improvisation can help you get your needs met and feel more relaxed in the process.
Don’t deny challenges or challenging feelings
Make sure your affirmations are authentic to your experience. If you’ve had a tough time with romance lately, an affirmation like, “Romance is always effortless for me,” might be both unrealistic and a denial of any recent difficulties.
If an affirmation isn’t authentic, it will be hard to connect with, so don’t abandon yourself emotionally with an affirmation. While affirmations can help create new neural pathways to then create new healthy patterns in your life, it’s also healthy to validate your challenging experiences and emotions.
This type of acknowledgment and acceptance can bring calm. Try an affirmation like, “I’m creating more healing in my romantic life this year.”
Notice when worries become a downward spiral & pivot to an affirmation
It’s so normal to worry! Yet, try to disrupt worries that feel like a hamster wheel of the same old fears and concerns cycling through your brain.
If you’re worried about security this year, try an affirmation like, “I’m slowly, steadily building more security in my life.” Remember that an affirmation to make your nervous system feel more stable and secure is part of achieving your goal in real time.
Follow up affirmations with small, manageable action steps
Affirmations work best when they motivate you to take healthy action. If your affirmation is “I’m taking better care of my physical body this year” take one mini action daily to back that up, like having a healthy snack, getting more rest, or making an appointment for the check-up you’ve been postponing (or working up the courage to do that).
My annual calendar A Year of Self-Love contains a self-love affirmation for each day plus a daily action step, because mantras marry well with movement. Being proactive can actually lower anxiety.
Edit & update affirmations as needed
Notice how you feel when you think of a favorite affirmation, working it into your mental self-talk. Are you more peaceful, joyful, hopeful, comforted, or encouraged? Play with the wording until the affirmation is both simple and emotionally satiating, like “I’m allowed to prioritize my self-care” or, if you have a large family at home or a work family at the office who rely on you, “Everyone benefits when I take good care of myself.”
If worries ever consume your thoughts, reach out for help and resources to reduce anxiety, because you deserve some serenity in 2026.