Here's one more of my affirmations.
Be. Do. Have.
I borrowed this one from artist coach Christine Kane. Even though the success of a business is measured in monetary terms, the rewards that really keep me fired up are rewards for the heart--like the great feeling I get when I make personal connections with others through art, or the personal satisfaction I feel when I master a new technique, or even the swell of pride I experience when I finish making a piece that I think is really beautiful.
So when I repeat this particular affirmation to myself those are the kinds of "emotional" rewards I'm hoping to see accumulating around me.
Here's another:
This is an affirmation that I conjured up because I've always been impatient. I want instant expertise and don't like spending time mastering things. In fact, as a child I dropped out of flute lessons, piano lessons, karate lessons, and more--all because I didn't want to spend time practicing the basics. Somehow I expected my piano & flute teachers to help me play songs by telling me where to hold my fingers. I didn't understand that I needed to train my eyes to read sheet music or train my fingers to instinctively know where the keys were.
It took a long time for me to understand that, but then I took a typing class and trained my mind and hands to type words without the aid of my eyes. And later on in life, I took pottery classes and spent weeks playing with mud before my hand-muscles developed a "memory" and could make stable pots without my thinking about the individual steps my teacher had demonstrated.
Even with these experiences behind me, I'm still impatient with myself. There are times when I see the work of other amazing artists and think "Wow, I never would have come up with that" or "Hmmm, I'm never going to be THAT good." But I do know better. I know that those artists spent lots of time mastering their trade. They weren't born with those skills. And I know that I'm on my way, too. This affirmation card is a reminder that it takes time to grow and master skills -- the rewards are slowly coming my way.