How often do you talk yourself into failing?
If you’re like most people, you’ve done it quite a bit. You may have talked yourself out of success without even knowing it.
Think about it.
Every day, we go about our normal lives. Throughout the course of each day, we have thousands upon thousands of thoughts that rapidly enter and leave our minds like ants swarming in and out of an anthill.
We don’t even notice it.
You are always talking to yourself. You’re sending yourself little messages throughout your day.
Suppose you were able to master these messages.
What if you could seize control of your self talk and make it work for you instead of against you? How much more effective could you be?
Here’s what you will learn in this post:
- Why your self talk can be dangerous.
- The benefits of changing the way you talk to yourself.
- How to master your self talk and use it for your own good.
Changing your self talk is important to your success. When you implement the tips given in this post, you will discover how to change the way you think. You will notice how much easier life can be when you use your self talk for your own benefit.
Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Let’s get started.
1. Understand Your Self Talk
In order to make your self talk work for you, it’s important to appreciate the power of your self talk. You need to understand how powerful your self talk can
Self Talk Can Be Dangerous
The reason self talk can be dangerous is because of the impact it has on the way you operate. The thoughts you carry inside can work their way into your outer life.
Whether you notice it or not, you will always act out your thoughts. It’s called self-fulfilling prophecy.
Here’s an example: Joe doesn’t believe he is good at public speaking. When his boss tells Joe that he needs to present his team’s numbers to the executives, he becomes afraid.
Since he has convinced himself that he’s not good at public speaking, it’s likely that he will bomb his presentation. It’s because his thoughts are impacting the way he performs on the outside.
The Good News…
If thoughts can make you sabotage your efforts, then the opposite is also true. If you start thinking in a way that is more positive, you will act in way that helps you succeed.
When you use positive self talk, you will find it easier to inspire yourself to do great things. When you do this on a regular basis, you will see how much you can truly accomplish.
2. Redefine Your Negative Thoughts
Controlling your self talk means learning how to redefine your thoughts. When you redefine your thoughts, you can take negative thoughts and turn them into something positive.
In her article “7 Ways To Learn From Your Negative Thoughts” on TinyBuddha.com, Bethany Rosselit discusses how she learned to think more positively by redefining her thoughts. She learned to train herself think in way that was more healthy and productive.
Usually, we define our thoughts as “good” or “bad.”
Makes sense, right? After all, what other types of thoughts are there?
Rosselit decided to define her thoughts differently.
Instead of defining her thoughts as “good” or “bad,” she began defining them as “useful” or “not useful.”
Useful thoughts empower you to reach your goals. They help you create solutions to your problems. They inspire you to succeed.
Non-useful thoughts impede your progress. They are insidious little monsters that paralyze you.They eat away at your self confidence. They prevent you from solving your problems. These types of thoughts limit you in every way possible.
Throughout the course of her transformation, Rosselit learned how to transform her non-useful thoughts into useful thoughts.
She broke down the process into 7 steps:
- Observe and accept your emotions without judging them.
- Identify the thoughts that cause your emotions. If you’re depressed, figure out what thoughts are making you depressed.
- Drill down further. Ask why you have these thoughts.
- Examine the evidence. Your mind will have gathered “evidence” for each thought. The evidence can be things that you have experienced that caused you to have the thought.
- Brainstorm other explanations. Are there other explanations for the events that caused your belief? What other explanations are there for the evidence your mind has gathered?
- Gather evidence to support your alternative explanations. Since your mind has automatically collected evidence for your non-useful thought, gather evidence that could prove that one of your alternative theories are true.
- Repeat the process. You don’t just do this once. You do this for each negative thought until you have sufficiently changed the beliefs that are causing your non-useful thoughts.
When you learn how to redefine your thoughts, you will be able to see how much easier to take control of your self talk. Remember, the objective isn’t to avoid non-useful thoughts. The objective is to confront these thoughts and transform them into useful thoughts that help you move forward.
3. Affirmations: Be Nice To Yourself
Along with learning how to redefine your thoughts, you must also learn how to train yourself to speak to yourself in a way that is useful. Transforming your self talk means taking a proactive approach to the way you talk to yourself.
This is where affirmations come in. Affirmations are positive phrases you say to yourself in order to maintain a better emotional state. When you tell yourself positive things, you will begin to believe them. Then, you will act out these thoughts. Remember what I said about self-fulfilling prophecy earlier?
Affirmations have been shown to be instrumental in changing the way people think of themselves and their circumstances.
Take a few minutes each day to say your affirmations aloud. You will begin to see a drastic change in the way you feel and the way you perform.
4. Focus On What You Do Right
How often do you think about your mistakes?
One of the reasons we have negative self talk is because we spend too much time focusing on where we’ve gone wrong. We fixate on the mistakes we have made.
It’s easy to do. But it isn’t healthy.
When you allow your thoughts to be occupied with your mistakes, it makes you feel less confident. Dwelling on your mistakes is not productive.
I’m not saying you should never think about your mistakes. It’s important to learn from them. You can use failures to grow.
What I am saying is that you need to also focus on the positive. Think about the things you have done right. The more you focus on what you’ve done right, the easier it will beto maintain your confidence. When your confidence is high, it enables you to continue to move forward even if you’re facing obstacles.
Conclusion
Mastering your thoughts is crucial for your success. When you learn to make your thoughts work for you instead of against you, it will become easier to overcome the obstacles you face.
As you implement the tips in this article, you will discover how much power you can have when you learn how to improve your self talk. You will see how much your confidence will increase when you’re learning you control the way you think.
Start using what you’ve learned. You will see a difference.
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