Self-Talk

How you talk to yourself is very important. When you make a mistake, do you berate yourself angrily?  Do you put yourself down or call yourself derogatory names?  When you have a hard time making positive changes in your life, do you bemoan what a “worthless” person you are and conclude that you’ll never do anything right?

Negative self-talk can be incredibly damaging to your self-esteem, especially if it’s a big part of your daily life.  When you keep saying things like that to yourself, eventually you begin to believe them! Become more aware of how you treat yourself with these simple steps:

1) Develop awareness of your self-talk.  It may take practice, but if you keep “listening” in to your inner voice, you’ll begin to notice when you talk negatively to yourself.

2) Challenge the negative messages.  When you notice yourself saying something negative such as, “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.

3) Replace the negative messages with positive messages.  When you realize you’re saying unkind and untrue things to yourself, simply turn it 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.  I’m a good person and I try my best.  That’s good enough for me.”

Over time, your efforts will pay off in the form of stronger self-esteem and respect for yourself and your capabilities.  It probably won’t happen overnight, but the more you work at turning your self-talk in a more positive direction, the better you’ll feel about yourself.
 

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.