Most of us are in constant mental chatter. We talk to ourselves all day long and, unfortunately, this self talk is frequently negative. Often it is tainted with guilt about our past or anxiety about our future. This negativity can destroy any seed of hope that we may otherwise have in striving for our dreams.
Our actions are inspired by our thoughts. If we can change the way we think, we can begin to change the actions we take. It is human nature to seek personal growth; whether financially, emotionally, physically or spiritually. Practicing positive self talk can help us set in motion actions that will bring us greater rewards.
The following are seven steps to positive self talk. By following these steps you will begin to rid your inner conversations of negativity and instead have empowering thoughts.
1. Eliminate Internal Negative Chatter
The first step is one of awareness. It will be hard to make a change to positive thinking without being acutely intimate with the thoughts that run through your mind. Recently, I was amazed to discover deep buried emotions from negative thoughts that I had for fewer than 10 minutes. Without awareness, I would have carried the hurt and anger inside. Awareness helped me to bring them out to the open for me to deal with.
Undoubtedly it will not be easy to make a switch if you have a long history or negative self talk. Your talk became negative over the years due to various factors. For instance, if your first grade teacher repeatedly told you that you were “stupid”, you might believe it to be truly the case. You would find that your inner chatter would often be filled with talk of “I am so slow” and “it is so hard to learn”. If you constantly tell yourself such negative stories, your actions are going to reflect your low self esteem. It will be difficult to get very far if you are always putting yourself down.
A common negative talk involves telling yourself “I can’t”. When you say to yourself “I can’t” or “it is too difficult”, you are creating a resistance. Having such a mental block will prevent you from achieving a task you could otherwise succeed at.
Anytime you catch yourself saying “I can’t…”, turn around and challenge your own claim with, “Why can’t I?” Research shows that most geniuses became the people they are also because of the hard work they put in. So if you would like to be successful, you need to start saying “I can” a lot more.
A great method that I have also found useful is to say “Cancel Cancel” each time I find myself saying something negative, whether in the mind or verbally. The method works if you sincerely have the intent of becoming a positive thinker.
2. Positive Affirmations
Affirmations are positive statements of a desired outcome or goal. They are usually short, believable and focused. By repeating them over and over again, you build inroads into your subconscious mind, opening up the possibility of a new state of thoughts.
An important step when repeating affirmations is that you need to read your affirmations aloud with feeling. The mere reading of the words bears no consequence unless you put some emotions behind them. Of significant fact is that your subconscious mind takes any orders given in complete faith and after repeated self talk. So the daily practice of repeating affirmations is important.
Initially you may be skepticism toward the statement of your positive affirmation. However, if you follow this simple set of instructions your skepticism will soon give way to a new set of beliefs and then crystallized into absolute faith.
3. Positive Scripts
One thing that you may observe is on how easy it is for your mind to build negative thought upon negative thought. The chatter not only does not stop but it spins a drama that traps and limits you.
From now on, regularly do this exercise instead. Spin an uplifting story that runs like a movie script. Some visualization will be helpful. You build on a story with a positive outline. The longer you can tell this story to yourself the better. It is also best if you can make this story one about having all your goals achieved. When you do this, you start to internalize your goals and dreams, as if they are something that you have already achieved.
4. Replace Negative Influences with Positive Ones
It is important that you identify external negative factors in your life which may be holding your thoughts hostage. For instance, your mental state can become toxic by being around friends who are negative. If you are not vigilant enough, you will start to adopt their thoughts as your own. Hence, be alert to what your negative influences are. If they come from certain friends, limit your exposure to them as much as you can. Refrain from discussing your plans with people who will be unsupportive of your dreams and goals.
Instead surround yourself with thoughts and actions from people who will empower you.
From being uninspired and de-motivated, you will begin to feel uplifted and driven to greater self growth. The positive energy that they vibrate will start affecting the self talk that you engage in as well.
5. Present Tense Messages
You may find yourself daunted by the many things you need to do in order to reach your goals. It just seems overwhelming to become the success that you secretly desire for. Your mind gets caught up in an endless stream of worry.
What may be helpful is to concentrate on steps you can take in the present. If you find yourself becoming stuck, stop and say, “What can I do right now?” Change your internal talk from a future anxiety ridden one to one that is about the more manageable present. You cannot control what will happen in the future but you can take the necessary steps now that will build a better tomorrow. Taking the necessary steps require you to focus your thoughts and inner talk on Now.
6. Confront Fears
Fear is often what holds you back from your success. You are scared of taking chances because you fear losing the security that you enjoy now. You try to convince yourself that you are happy in your current state when in fact, you are not. Your self talk may sound positive in your attempt to lie to yourself. But somehow, there is an inner knowing that you are short changing yourself.
Ask yourself what you are afraid of. What can be the worst that can happen? Take a step-by-step approach in breaking down your fears and see if there is any way round to looking at things more positively. When you confront your fears, you will often realize that the worst case scenario is not as bad as you think. In fact, the benefits of change are worth the risk. Your inner talk begins to change at this point.
7. Focus on Enjoyable Moments
It is much easier to have a positive attitude if you focus on the enjoyable moments in life rather than the difficult ones. While there will inevitably be challenges, you need to remember that life consists of ups and downs and the good times are forged through the bad.
So choose to fill your mind with positive images and thoughts. Make it a conscious habit. Simply bring your mind back every time it goes astray in its thoughts. For a start, if you can be grateful for what you have presently, your self talk will also change to be in alignment with one of joy. A state of gratitude does wonders to your psyche.
Conclusion
Replacing self talk from a negative to a more positive one is not going to happen overnight. If your mind has ingrained habits of thinking negatively, it will take some work and time. However, if you find yourself often struggling, unable to achieve your goals and talking yourself down, then you should grit your teeth and commit to the process of change.
By following the above tips to positive self talk, you will experience an improvement in the quality of your life. The rewards are plentiful with greater happiness, peace and joy. Best of all, you feel empowered. With the change in energy, you are more likely to reach your highest potential and achieve success.
This guest post was written by Evelyn Lim of Attraction Mind Map.
Image by *Zara.
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I am glad to go through such blog, where i find such important information, and i like this blog where the details of 7 steps are been explained in detail.
I wonder sometimes if we really need positive self-talk to work towards our goals.
Personally I try to always use awareness, eliminating any talk. Then when I decide to do something(usually from a plan) I do it (after getting rid of the chatter that always starts when you try to do something).
I find the space without chatter brings me the peace and happiness.
Hi Evelyn - great post. In particular, I like #3. I’m used to people calling it “visualization”, but you describe it as a “script”. To me, a script is a complete story (beginning, middle, conclusion), while visualization is incomplete and is only one or perhaps a handful of scenes.
Great post! Psychologists have identified 10 negative thought patterns that plagues most people, such as all-or-nothing thinking and jumping to conclusion, which I describe and explain how best to overcome in my post “10 Harmful Thoughts” at http://shanelyang.com/2008/06/18/10-harmful-thoughts/ Also, it’s impossible to eliminate self-talk, so the best we can hope for — which is also what we want b/c self-talk is so powerful at influencing our attitude and behavior — is to change it from negative or neutral to positive. I wrote about 50 of my own negative self-talk and how I changed them to positive self-talk in my “50 Negative v. Positive Thoughts” at http://shanelyang.com/2008/06/27/50-negative-v-positive-thoughts/
Great post, confronting your fears is very important. You will find that many are unjustified.
@Jarrod, Yes…most certainly, the experiencing of peace is awesome in the space without chatter. I’ve often experienced this myself during meditation. But outside of it, it’s not easy to stop the chatter. Sometimes actions can help to quieten the noise; but sometimes not. Since it is in the human mind to be engaged, then I would prefer to fill it with positive talk than negative ones.
@Al, I’m glad that you like this tip because we are all love stories. It is a great way to “engage” your subconscious mind in some kind of plot.
Evelyn
Excellent post. You are correct - it takes effort to maintain the positive. Dugg !
Evelyn -
I love this article. I’ve been personally using something similar to the positive affirmation - You may call it mantra as it is short but powerful. For example, I self talk in the morning after waking up with - “I’m the best,” Or “It’s a great day”.
Shilpan
Wonderful post there Evelyn!
I try to think rationally nowadays. Most negative self-talk is simply irrational. It’s one thing to blindly think you suck, it’s entirely another to put that thought under scrutiny and analysis. Once you accept who you are a lot of that talk disappears anyway. I’m not an especially outgoing person and I used to beat myself up for it but now that I’ve accepted who I am I’m no longer comparing myself to other talkative people.
Very inspiring. I often use eliminating negative chatter and positive self talk. I still have to try out visualization.
Have dugg and stumbled.
Negitive talk is hard to stop. I think that we don’t need to stop it, more like make it more natural for you to produce a positive talk. I do this by giving a positive reason for anything I used to think of as negative.
Unfortunately a lot of our beliefs about who we are and what we are capable of were created when we were too young to evaluate whether what we were being told was the truth or the best way to look at the world. As adults we need to reexamine our belief system because our belief system gives rise to our mind chatter, which then give rise to our actions, which then creates our life. I think posts like this one are important to remind people of this.
@Evelyn: “Since it is in the human mind to be engaged”. Providing I understand what you mean I disagree. The mind is simply the mind, it does not have to be in action more than not.
Hi Evelyn,
This is an excellent compilation of action steps for us to take.
Stumbled. Congrats on an excellent guest “appearance”!
Good post, there are some more points like to add, we also require some negative thought that also improve our performance when we think that we not doing things good than we try to move towards to do things good which lead us to move towards success or doing things good. When we come to know that negative thought over ruling us by making us tense or dipressed or ill or any other negative thing than we have to think opposite to our negative thought.
Hi Evelyn,
You hit the nail on the head when you stressed how important internalizing positivity is. Negative chatter has a way of mushrooming into other aspects of our lives. How much better it is when we turn that around and learn to live a life filled with optimism.
Great post!
Hey Evelyn,
You’re spot on. And this is also something that we need to work on daily, to build the habit and muscle of positiveness.
It is not that easy for most of us, as we probably have been conditioned since very young to be a bit negative (as a way of protecting ourselves) but through work and focus we can make a difference!
Open Heart
Some great stuff in this post.
Another suggestion I’d make is if you are literally having negative self talk then try changing the tone, pitch or volume of the talk.
It is hard to take a cartoon voice seriously. Or one that sounds like it just inhaled helium.
Ron
http://www.distinctionsforlife.tv/
Excellent article. Too often we are controlled with limiting beliefs about ourselves that fill our minds coming out as negative self-talk. Positive self-talk is so much more empowering!
Excellent article. Very helpful and full of motivation. I believe by focusing on the tips perhaps I would be able to cope up with my self ctiticizing views which are sow deep down in my mind . mind blowing ideas!
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