How I Use AI to Create Better Affirmations for Real Business Situations

I experimented with using AI to create affirmations for business owners — and eventually turned those ideas into an 18-episode podcast. What I learned is that AI is much better at this when you stop asking it for “positive affirmations” and start giving it a real moment to respond to.

I have a complicated relationship with affirmations.

I like the idea behind them.

I like taking a minute to interrupt whatever is running through my head and deliberately decide what deserves my attention instead.

But I don't particularly connect with statements that feel disconnected from reality.

If I'm nervous about walking into a networking event where I don't know anyone, repeating:

“I am a powerful networking magnet.”

is probably not going to do much for me.

I don't need to convince myself that I'm suddenly the most charismatic person in the room.

I might need to remember:

“I don't need to impress everyone here. I can be curious, ask good questions, and have a few genuine conversations.”

That's different.

It's believable.

It's connected to the situation I'm actually facing.

And most importantly, it suggests what I should do next.

That distinction became increasingly important to me when I started experimenting with affirmations for business owners.

I explored themes like focus, networking, communication, confidence, creativity, goal setting, stress, work-life harmony, and uncertainty.

Eventually, the experiment grew into an actual podcast called Bite-Sized Small Business Owner Affirmations. I used an AI clone of my own voice and published 18 short episodes through Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

I've written separately about the AI voice-cloning and podcast-production side of that experiment.

But there was another experiment happening underneath the podcast:

Could AI help create affirmations that were more specific to what someone was actually dealing with?

That's the part I find even more useful today.

Because you don't need a podcast.

You don't need a morning affirmation routine.

You don't even necessarily need to think of yourself as someone who “does affirmations.”

You can simply use AI to help turn a moment of uncertainty, distraction, nerves, or self-doubt into a more useful thought — and then connect that thought to an action.

That's what I want to show you how to do.

Part 1: Why Generic Affirmations Can Feel So Hard to Believe

The original affirmation content I created was mostly aimed at business owners.

That was intentional.

Running a business gives you a nearly endless supply of moments where your internal dialogue isn't particularly helpful.

• You have too many things competing for your attention.
• You're about to give a presentation.
• You need to walk into a room full of people you don't know.
• An employee needs feedback.
• A project isn't working.
• You're considering an idea that could either be smart or a complete waste of time.
• You've worked too many hours this week.
• You need to make a decision without having all the information you'd like.
• You're waiting for someone to respond to a proposal.
• You're comparing your business to somebody else's.

Those aren't abstract “mindset” problems when you're in them.

They're Tuesday at 2:15.

And that's where I think a lot of generic affirmation advice loses me.

The affirmation can be too far away from what you're actually thinking

Suppose you're about to speak in front of a group.

Your actual thought might be:

I'm worried I'll lose my place and sound like I don't know what I'm talking about.

Now compare that with:

“I am the most confident and compelling speaker in every room.”

There's a pretty large gap between those two thoughts.

Maybe that statement works beautifully for someone.

For me, I'd rather narrow the gap.

Something like:

“I know this material. I don't have to perform it perfectly. I can slow down, make one point at a time, and connect with the people in front of me.”

That doesn't ask me to pretend I'm feeling something I'm not.

It gives me a different way to enter the situation.

And it gives me instructions:

slow down → one point at a time → connect

That's much more useful to me.

This is where my old affirmation experiment started evolving

As I created content around different business situations, I kept returning to the same idea:

The words work better when they're attached to something.

For focus, that might mean pairing the affirmation with clearing distractions, choosing the most important task, or using a timer.

For networking, it might mean reminding yourself to ask questions rather than trying to impress everyone.

For creativity, it might mean giving yourself permission to explore an imperfect idea and then actually scheduling time to develop it.

For communication, it might mean reminding yourself to listen — and then entering the conversation with a question instead of a speech.

In other words:

Don't stop at the affirmation.

That became the foundation for how I think about using AI for this now.

Part 2: Why AI Gets More Useful When You Give It the Actual Situation

You can open ChatGPT or another AI assistant right now and type:

Give me 10 affirmations for business owners.

You'll get them. Probably immediately.

And they'll probably sound fine.

They may include statements about abundance, confidence, leadership, success, resilience, growth, opportunity, and trusting yourself.

There isn't necessarily anything wrong with them.

They're just answering a generic question.

The more interesting capability of AI isn't that it can generate more affirmations.

It's that you can give it more context.

AI can respond to the moment instead of the category

Compare these two prompts.

The second prompt gives AI something to work with.

There's a person. There's a situation. There's friction. There's a desired state. There's even guidance about the tone.

That's where I think AI becomes genuinely useful for this.

Not: tell me something positive.

But: help me find a more useful way to think about what's happening right now.

The difference is personalization

Historically, you might have found an affirmation in a book, podcast, social post, deck of cards, or list online.

You'd scan through them and find one that felt relevant.

AI can reverse that process.

You can start with your situation and generate the words around it.

That's a subtle but significant shift.

You don't have to search through 100 affirmations for confidence hoping one fits. You can explain why your confidence is shaky today.

That's much closer to the way I want to use AI generally.

I don't need AI to produce an infinite amount of content. I want it to help me think through something more specifically.

But there's another important distinction: an affirmation isn't an action

This became one of the biggest things I'd change about some of my earlier affirmation content.

It's very easy to write:

“I confidently communicate my needs and expectations.”

Great.

What happens next?

If the actual problem is that you need to have a difficult conversation with someone on your team, the useful outcome isn't repeating that sentence 15 times.

The useful outcome is having the conversation differently.

So now I'd ask AI for both:

What do I need to remind myself?

and

What should I do because of that reminder?

That's the system.

Part 3: My 5-Step Method for Turning a Real Business Moment Into a Grounded Affirmation + Action

You don't need a complicated prompt library for this.

You need to give AI five pieces of information.

I think of them as:

Situation → Friction → Desired State → Grounded Reminder → Action

Let's walk through each one.

Step 1: Describe what's actually happening

Don't start with the affirmation. Start with the moment.

Imagine you're having trouble focusing. You could ask:

Give me affirmations for focus.

But let's give AI the real version instead:

I own a small business and I'm having trouble focusing today. I have a proposal to finish, several emails that feel urgent, two people waiting for decisions from me, and I keep jumping between tasks.

That's useful context.

Notice that you don't need to write a beautifully engineered AI prompt. You're describing what's happening.

Try this:

You could use this for almost anything.

• Mindset: I'm discouraged because something I launched didn't get the response I expected.
• Focus: I have five things that seem equally important and keep switching between them.
• Networking: I'm going to an event alone and I'm already thinking about leaving early.
• Speaking: I have to present tomorrow and I'm worried I'll rush.
• Team leadership: I need to correct someone's work without making them feel attacked.
• Clarity: I have three possible directions for this project and keep changing my mind.
• Confidence: I'm about to pitch something that costs considerably more than what I normally sell.
• Creativity: I have an idea I like, but I'm afraid I'm wasting time on something that won't work.
• Work-life harmony: I've been answering work messages all evening and need to stop.
• Communication: I need to have a conversation I've been avoiding.

Those are situations AI can work with.

Step 2: Name the friction underneath it

Now ask: what's making this hard?

Sometimes you already know. Other times, AI can help you separate the situation from the story you're telling yourself about it.

Take the networking example.

Situation: I'm going to an event where I don't know anyone.

Friction: I feel like I'm supposed to impress people and make the event “worth it.”

That's much more useful.

Situation: I have to speak tomorrow.

Friction: I think one mistake will make people question whether I know what I'm talking about.

Situation: I have too many competing tasks.

Friction: I'm treating everything that wants my attention as equally deserving of my attention.

That distinction is important.

You're not asking AI to diagnose you. You're using it as a thinking partner to help articulate what's getting in the way.

Try this follow-up:

Read the response. You decide what fits.

AI isn't the authority on what you're thinking. You are.

Step 3: Decide how you actually want to show up

This is the step I think generic affirmation lists skip most often.

Before generating a positive statement, define the desired state.

And don't automatically make the desired state confident.

Sometimes confidence isn't what you need. Maybe you want to be:

calm · curious · focused · patient · clear · open · decisive · present · creative · direct · kind · willing to experiment

Let's return to the networking example.

You might think you need to become confident. But maybe that's not really the goal.

Maybe you want to be curious.

That's easier.

You don't have to walk into the room feeling fearless. You can walk in thinking:

I'm here to learn something about a few interesting people.

Now you've changed the assignment.

Try this:

Pick one. That's what we'll build the affirmation around.

Step 4: Ask AI for a grounded affirmation — not hype

Now we're finally ready for the words.

Give AI the situation, friction, and desired state. Then tell it what you don't want.

I find this particularly useful. You can say:

That's an extremely useful instruction.

Here's a reusable prompt

Then choose the one that resonates.

You can also combine pieces. Edit it. Make it sound like you.

The AI response is raw material. It doesn't need the final word.

What this looks like in different business situations

Do you see the difference?

These aren't predictions. They're not magic spells.

They're closer to instructions for the mindset you want to bring into the next few minutes.

That's why I find them useful.

Step 5: Give every affirmation a corresponding action

This is the part I'd emphasize most if I were rebuilding my original affirmation project today.

Ask: if I actually believed this reminder, what would I do next?

That's where the exercise becomes practical.

That's the combination I like:

Situation → Friction → Desired State → Affirmation → Action

And you can have AI help you complete the entire sequence.

The complete prompt

Here's the version I'd save:

That's considerably more interesting to me than give me 10 affirmations for success.

But do affirmations actually work?

This is where I want to be more careful than I was in some of my earlier writing about affirmations.

There are plenty of sweeping claims online about affirmations “rewiring your brain,” attracting outcomes, or turning whatever you repeat into reality.

That's not how I want to frame this.

There is a real field of research around self-affirmation, but the research concept is more nuanced than simply repeating positive slogans.

Self-affirmation theory, originally developed by psychologist Claude Steele, concerns maintaining a broader sense of self-integrity when something threatens how we see ourselves. Research has continued to examine how reflecting on personally important values can affect responses to threats and behavior.

There is also an important reason not to assume that every positive statement helps everyone.

One well-known study found that repeating an unrealistically positive self-statement could actually leave some participants with low self-esteem feeling worse rather than better.

That's one reason I prefer the word grounded.

I'm less interested in trying to overpower an uncomfortable thought with an enormous positive claim.

I'm interested in asking: what's a more useful and believable way to approach this situation?

And then: what action follows from it?

That's a much smaller promise. But I think it's a much more useful one.

Part 4: How to Build Your Own AI-Assisted Affirmation Practice in the Next 7 Days

You don't need to create hundreds of affirmations.

You don't need a giant journal.

You don't need to repeat something 50 times every morning.

And you definitely don't need to wait until you've designed the perfect personal-development routine.

I'd start smaller.

The goal for the next seven days is simply:

Catch one real moment each day when your internal dialogue isn't helping — and use AI to turn it into one grounded reminder and one useful action.

By the end of a week, you'll have seven examples created around your actual life and work.

Not somebody else's affirmation list. Yours.

Day 1: Notice the moment

Don't try to fix anything yet.

When you notice yourself feeling scattered, nervous, hesitant, frustrated, uncertain, or stuck, write down what's happening.

One or two sentences. That's enough.

Day 2: Identify the friction

Take one of those moments to AI. Ask what friction might be underneath it.

Don't accept the first answer automatically. Use the conversation to figure out which explanation actually sounds like you.

Day 3: Change the desired state

Ask yourself: how do I want to show up here?

Not: how do I want the situation to turn out?

You can't control whether everyone loves your presentation. You can control whether you slow down.

You can't control whether the networking event produces a client. You can control whether you enter it curious instead of trying to impress everyone.

That's the level we're working at.

Day 4: Create your first grounded reminders

Use the prompt from Part 3. Generate a few options.

Delete the ones that make you roll your eyes.

Edit one until it sounds like something you'd actually tell yourself. Keep it.

Day 5: Attach the action

Ask: if I believed this for the next 15 minutes, what would I do differently?

Make the action small enough to happen now. That's important.

“Become a better communicator” isn't an action.

“Ask the other person to explain what they think happened before I respond” is.

Day 6: Look for patterns

Review what you've created.

Maybe your situations seem completely unrelated. Or maybe they aren't.

You may notice that several come back to focus, confidence, boundaries, uncertainty, communication, or trying to control outcomes you don't actually control.

That's useful information.

Now AI can help you notice recurring themes across the situations you've documented.

Day 7: Build your tiny library

Keep the reminders that worked. Delete the ones that didn't. Group them however makes sense to you.

Maybe you end up with:

• Before a difficult conversation
• When everything feels urgent
• Before presenting
• When I'm second-guessing an idea
• When I need to stop working
• Before walking into a networking event

That's already more useful than a generic list of 100 affirmations because every one of them came from a situation you've actually encountered.

And the next time that situation appears, you don't have to start from scratch.

You can take this much further

This was part of what interested me enough to turn my own affirmation experiment into audio.

I eventually created Bite-Sized Small Business Owner Affirmations, an 18-episode podcast built around different situations and themes for business owners.

I even used an AI clone of my own voice to produce it.

That became an entirely different AI experiment — and taught me some unexpected lessons about voice cloning, podcasting, consistency, and the kinds of episodes people actually chose to listen to.

You could also turn your own library into a short morning audio, a pre-presentation reset, a set of reminders on your phone, a weekly reflection practice, or even situation-specific audio you listen to when you need it.

But you don't have to.

The simplest version may be the most useful:

Something is happening. Your current internal dialogue isn't helping. You give AI the context. It helps you find a more grounded thought. You connect that thought to something you can actually do.

That's the whole system.

Seven days from now, you could have your first small library of grounded reminders built around the situations you encounter most often.

And unlike a generic list you found online, you'll know exactly why each one is there.

One last thing I learned from this experiment

I started exploring AI and affirmations because AI makes it incredibly easy to create words.

I've become more interested in the opposite question:

Which words are actually worth keeping?

AI doesn't need to tell us that everything will work out.

It doesn't need to tell us we're unstoppable.

It doesn't need to generate endless positivity.

Sometimes it can simply help us interrupt an unhelpful thought long enough to ask:

What's actually happening here? How do I want to approach it? And what's the next thing I can do?

That's a much quieter use of AI.

I think it might also be one of the more human ones.

If you try this with a situation of your own, I'd genuinely like to hear how it went. Get in touch and let's talk it through.