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- ‘Affirmations Renegotiate How We Talk to Ourselves’: Tayla Damir on Using Angel Cards For Self Acceptance
‘Affirmations Renegotiate How We Talk to Ourselves’: Tayla Damir on Using Angel Cards For Self Acceptance
Instagram @tayla.damir
Spirituality has been an important part of Tayla Damir’s life she since was a child. The former radio presenter and winner of the 2018 season of Love Island Australia has always felt a strong connection to her intuition and spirituality. So much so that Damir was inspired to create her own line of affirmation cards under the business Angel Energy and Co.
“I think I’ve always been quite intuitive, which is something that I find really special and love, that I have that gut feeling, and also just believing that there is more to death and that the people we love will be around us and their energy and spirit,” Damir told POPSUGAR Australia.
“From a young age, I used to pull out angel cards with my mum and it was probably my most favourite thing to do in the morning before I would go to school because then I had that belief that whatever I pulled out that day was going to help me get through school and that the angels were always going to be watching over me. I had a big belief that my grandmother was watching over me because to me, she is an angel.”
This strong connection to angels wasn’t the only inspiration behind the creation of Angel Energy and Co. Damir’s personal experience with anxiety and body image issues caused her to seek a holistic approach to the treatment of these. For Damir, affirmations proved to be extremely helpful and thus, the idea of a deck of affirmation cards was born.
“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve really wanted to learn more about mental health and learn more about the different approaches that one can take to benefit their own mental health as well as the mental health of others,” Damir said.
“Through a lot of research and also just trial and error, I found affirmations to be a really big help for me, and really just retraining my mind and my brain and having something that helps set an intention to improve my overall mental health, through my own ability of talking to myself and telling myself positive affirmations.”
She continued: “I think that was really cemented as well during COVID because I wasn’t able to do the things I love and have those kinds of distractions and usual routines that maybe I would have had before in regards to looking after my mental health. So I really turned to affirmations and started writing my own affirmations down, and then sharing them through my social media.
“And it was through sharing through social media that I had so many people reach out and express that these affirmations were also helping them and was having an impact on their lives and their time during COVID.”
The process of repeating affirmations on a daily basis can help shift your mindset and work towards certain goals. According to Healthline, regular repetitions of affirming statements can actually encourage your brain to take these affirmations as fact which is pretty cool for something so simple!
“There are so many benefits, but probably the biggest one would be just improving your mindset as well as your self-awareness,” Damir said. “So being aware of how you talk to yourself. In a podcast that I was listening to the other week, someone asked, ‘Who do you talk to the most?’ and my initial kind of reaction was ‘Well, probably my partner’, and then the podcaster said, ‘We actually talk to ourselves the most, because we’re talking to ourselves in our head, all day long — there is never an off switch.
“So using those affirmations to really renegotiate how we talk to ourselves and really come up with more positive thinking and obviously improved self-love and acceptance, as well as reducing anxiety. It’s something that is literally talking to ourselves in just a more positive way and having that as your intention for the day. It’s so easy, and yet we just don’t seem to do it enough.”
Under Angel Energy and Co, Damir has four affirmation decks: Anxiety Affirmation Cards, Body Image Affirmation Cards, Male Affirmation Cards and Daily Affirmation Cards (all $50 each). While picking a favourite deck is probably akin to picking a favourite child, Damir admits that she uses the Anxiety Affirmation Cards the most.
“That one is probably one of my favourites just because I do suffer from anxiety and being able to pull a card that really just helps your mind find that light at the end of the tunnel, and really just brings it back to that whole, ‘I can achieve anything kind of mindset’.”
When it comes to using the cards, there are a number of ways to do this. For Damir, intuition plays a role in this — whatever way you feel drawn to using the cards is how you should use them. “I always say that, however you feel in your gut is how you should use the cards,” she said. “But there’s definitely ways I recommend it. I for instance always love shutting my eyes.”
She continued: “I place them all out, I’ll shuffle them, set an intention or talk to the cards in my head, talking about my problems, and then I’ll lay them out and from there, I’ll shut my eyes and wherever my hand goes is, I will pick a card otherwise maybe I’ll shuffle the deck and if the card falls out during that shuffling, that’s usually what the angels are trying to tell you.
“But I also love doing it on my friends, I think it’s a really nice way of getting people to talk about their emotions and feelings. For instance, I pulled a card for a friend the other day, and she got quite emotional after doing it. She was like, ‘I’ve actually really been struggling with my body image lately’.
“And it was a conversation opener up through me being like, ‘Hey, let’s pull you a card’. So leaving them on your desk at work or your desk at home, I think is a really good way to invite other people to pick up the deck and want to use it too which can also benefit somebody else’s mental health.”
For more information, head to Angel Energy and Co.
