SELF TALK

Did you know that we are constantly in communiqué with ourselves all day?

No, not the mental chatter about activities and chores we must remember throughout the day. That’s a form of self-talk too — but I’m referring to the things we say to ourselves regularly; and more importantly, the tone we tell them.

When we make a mistake, do we berate ourselves angrily? Do we put ourselves down or call ourselves self-derogatory names?

When we have a hard time making positive changes in our life, do we bemoan what a “worthless” person we are and conclude that we can’t do anything right?

Negative self-talk can be incredibly damaging to our self-esteem, especially if it’s a big part of our daily life. When we keep saying things like that to ourselves, eventually we begin to BELIEVE them!

The highest self-esteem and self-confidence are two of the “keys” to unlocking the door to our desires.

Most often these negative messages begin as statements uttered by the adults in our life when we were a child… They may have said something negative about us when our actions displeased them, or perhaps they had a habit of saying unkind things even when we didn’t deserve it.

As painful as these experiences can be, even worse is when we pick up where they left off and keep repeating the same negative messages to ourselves over and over!

The good news is that you can change your “self-talk” any time you want. The first step is to become AWARE of the ‘tone’ of your messages and consciously ‘replace’ them with more encouraging ones.

Try these simple steps for starters:

• Develop AWARENESS of your self-talk. It may take practice, but if we start “listening” to our inner voice, we’ll begin to notice when we talk negatively to ourselves.

• CHALLENGE the negative messages. When we notice ourselves, saying something negative such as, “We’re such a screw-up, we can’t do anything right” — Stop our self and challenge that belief. Is that really true? Maybe we mess up sometimes, but do we ALWAYS mess up? Probably not

* REPLACE these negative messages with positive messages. When we realize we’re saying unkind and untrue things to ourselves, simply TURN IT AROUND in our minds.

Using the above example, we 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. I’m a good person and I try my best. That’s good enough for me.”

Over time, these efforts will pay off in the form of stronger self-esteem and RESPECT for Ourselves and our Capabilities. It probably won’t happen overnight, but the more we work at turning our self-talk in a more positive direction, the better we’ll feel about ourselves.

Make this our mission to ensure we are at that cutting edge to be in control of OUR SELF TALK.

David Nair