Positive Self Talk

I want to bring up the subject of how you talk to yourself and how you can change that and adopt positive mind talk to help you in your journey.

Start to take notice of how you talk to yourself in your head.  Is it positive, is it negative?  Would you speak to a friend the way you speak to yourself?  Quite often you might find that the conversations you have with yourself are quite negative.  We can be very quick to judge ourselves negatively.  I know for myself that I have called myself fat, ugly, stupid, unloveable, all sorts of horrible things that I would never say to a friend.

Experiments have been done on plants and even water where people speak to them either negatively and positive and it has been found that this affects the way they grow and the nature of the cells in the water.  Imagine what the same could do to a human being.

The first step is to notice that you are saying negative things.  Once you notice, you can start to change your habits.  The first step to try is as soon as you notice negative self talk, stop, and say 3 positive things about yourself.  It doesn’t matter what it is, just 3 positive things.  I know that can seem difficult and intimidating at first.  We feel uncomfortable acknowledging positives, and even more uncomfortable seeming like we are being big headed.  Rest assured that is not the purpose, our goal is to love ourselves for who we are, accept ourselves entirely.

As an example, you might hear yourself saying “You look awful in that outfit!”.  As soon as you hear that, you might say “You have nice eyes.  You are a loyal friend.  You keep a tidy house.”  Over time, you’ll start to feel more comfortable with these positive comments and eventually, the negative ones will reduce and, hopefully, disappear.

Another area where we can improve our self talk is around habits.  Notice the way you frame the things you say.  Are you creating your reality the way you want it?  Could you improve?

For example, having a habit of saying that you always do something can set it up as a routine.  Such as:-

“I always sleep badly”

“I always eat too much”

“I always have a drink with dinner”

If you don’t like the messages you are giving yourself, try framing it another way such as:- 

“I sleep until my alarm”

“I eat just enough”

“I drink water with dinner”

The way we speak about our habits can create a pattern of behaviour as we subconsciously follow the instructions that we are giving ourselves. 

Start to notice your self talk and use it to your advantage.  You can turn any negatives into positives and even create mantras to really lock them down.  Whilst spending some time doing mindful breathing, you could repeat your positive statements, “I eat just enough.  I eat just enough.  I eat just enough”.  You could even do this whilst taking a mindful walk to really cement these positive behaviour patterns.

If you’re struggling with how to reframe your thoughts, reach out and we can work on this together 💛