Positive vibes are powerful. But they’ll never beat out survival patterns.

Affirmations Lift Your Mood.
Patterns Run Your Life.
– Soulve

In my teens, I knew there had to be more.

I was raised in 80s South Africa — Christian, traditional, “seen and not heard.” Respect your elders. Do as I say, not as I do. When I questioned why all the major religions shared similar themes in Religious Instruction class, I wasn’t given an answer. I was kicked out of the class.

So I went looking elsewhere.

At 20, I found Louise Hay, and something in my gut exhaled. Affirmations. Mirror work. You can heal your life. It made sense in a way nothing else had.

I consumed the “new age” material like oxygen — books, DVDs, courses, Louise Hay, Tony Robbins, NLP, Michael Newton, Paulo Coelho, Byron Katie. I spent thousands every month chasing the next breakthrough, the next tape, the next seminar that might finally change everything.

And don’t get me wrong … there were shifts. Real ones. My self-love grew. Acceptance softened. I expanded.

But here’s the honest part: most of it lived in my head.

I was chasing the next quote that would fix me. I wasn’t yet living the wiring.

Then life stripped the theory away.

At 38, I married the man I’d dated in my twenties — the one I’d left during my hyper-religious phase because “you don’t live in sin.” (Yes, we did a dramatic full-circle.) I got pregnant. Two babies in 18 months. Suddenly there was no time for spiritual theory. There was sleep deprivation, marriage, work, and real fights.

And when we fought, my old pattern roared back: pack up, leave, run.

Except now I had two babies. Three grannies. And a life I genuinely wanted.

So instead of leaving, I stayed. Not because I was enlightened — because I wanted to. I was tired of repeating old patterns. This was my third marriage!

Slowly — painfully slowly — I realised I didn’t need to run every time conflict showed up. Seventeen years later, we can scream like banshees and still know the fight is transient. That it will pass, that a fight does not mean we are over.

That stability didn’t come from affirmations. It came from living through discomfort long enough for my nervous system to rewire.

Here’s the thing no one tells you:

Manifesting may change your circumstances.
Pattern work will change your responses.

You can visualise the perfect relationship, but if your wiring says “run when it gets hard,” you’ll sabotage it. You can affirm abundance, but if your pattern is burnout, you’ll exhaust yourself earning it. 

Positive vibes are powerful. But they don’t automatically dismantle survival patterns.

That’s grown-up work.

Do I sometimes wish I’d figured it out sooner? Of course. But the journey doesn’t end. Sometimes a wound looks healed, and then it shows up in a new disguise.

The difference now is that I don’t panic. I recognise it. Each time it resurfaces, I meet it with more awareness and less drama. I’m healing at deeper layers.

That’s the work.

Not perfection.
Not the expectation of constant peace that I had in my 30’s.

Just awareness. Staying. Choosing differently. Again and again.

And honestly? It’s beautiful.

 

Reflection

Where in your life are you still trying to “affirm” your way out of a pattern that actually needs to be examined?