"Have You Listened to Your
Self-Talk Lately?"

Did you know that you talk to yourself all day long, that you have self-talk? I'm not talking about the mental chatter about all the activities and chores you need to remember throughout the day. That's a form of self talk too, but what I'm referring to are the things you say to yourself on a regular basis; and more importantly, the tone in which you say them and how they make you feel.

When you make a mistake, do you berate yourself angrily? Do you put yourself down or call yourself bad names? When you have a hard time making positive changes in your life, do you blame yourself and tell yourself what a "worthless" person you are and conclude that you'll never do anything right?

Negative self-talk can be extremely damaging to your self-esteem, especially if it goes on and on most of your daily life. When you keep verbally abusing yourself like that, eventually you begin to believe the things you say! But more importantly the way you feel about yourself is affected.

Most often these messages stem from when you were a child. The adults you knew and trusted may have said something negative about you when you did something they didn't approve of, or perhaps they had a habit of saying terrible things even when you didn't deserve it. Eventhough these are very painful experiences, what's even worse is when you pick up where they left off and keep repeating the same negative messages to yourself over and over again!

The good news is that you have the choice to change your self-talk any time you want. You just have to learn how to become aware of the tone of your messages and how to consciously replace them with more encouraging ones.

Try these three simple steps to get you started:

Step1: Develop awareness of your self-talk

It may take practice, but if you keep "listening" in on your inner voice, you'll begin to realize when you talk negatively to yourself.

Step 2: Challenge those negative messages

When you notice yourself saying something negative like, "You're such a screw-up, you can't do anything right" - stop yourself and challenge that belief. Is that really true? Maybe you mess up sometimes, but do you ALWAYS mess up? Probably not.

Step 3: Replace negative messages with positive ones

When you realize you're saying unkind and untrue things to yourself, simply turn them around in your mind. Using the above example, you might say, "Wow, that's not true at all! I do plenty of things right. It's true I make mistakes, but so does everyone else. I'm a good person and I try my best. That's good enough for me."

Whenever we decide to inforce major changes in our lives we need to be prepared to experience resistance. This resistance can come in the form of negative self talk, but also as procrastination. There is nothing wrong with this, it just is! All you need to do is accept it and say to yourself "Thank you for doing the best you can to protect my old self, but I prefer to think that [fill in something positive] and I am ready and willing to change".

You see, we all have our story. Things we've gone through in life. Based on these experiences and the thoughts and beliefs we developed over time, we create our reality. It is normal for us to want to remain the same, because we are familiar with that person. Your subconscious loves predictability.

The moment we want to change something in our life, it is crucial to accept ourselves just the way we are at that moment and respectfully take baby steps toward a different mind set. That way we encounter less resistance.

Over time, you will enjoy the benefits of positive self-talk, like stronger self-esteem and respect for yourself and your capabilities. It mostlikely won't happen overnight, but the more you work at turning your self-talk in a more positive direction, the greater you'll feel about yourself.

Return from Self-Talk to Feel Great
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