Have you ever said, "Oh, I am so stupid!"? How about "I can't even do this small thing right!"? Do you have tapes that play inside your head from your past that tell you that you aren't good enough or that you aren't going to make anything of your life? Do you ever feel like you are your own worst enemy?
It could be that your self-talk is defeating your efforts. Self-talk can be audible, but it can also be what you are thinking. The tapes that play in your head might be things that a parent, a teacher or a bully said to you when you were small that you have carried with you for many years. The good news is, you can change what you say to yourself! You can stop those old tapes in their tracks and replace them with positive affirmations that help build you up instead of tearing you down.
If this resonates with you, read on for some techniques to use when you are saying things to yourself that aren't very nice.
The first thing to do is to pay attention. Listen to what you are saying to yourself. Your cue that you are giving yourself negative self-talk might be a physical feeling in your body. Maybe your stomach suddenly hurts or you feel nauseous. Maybe you have a prickly feeling at the nape of your neck. Maybe it happens when you make a mistake or don't do something perfectly. What messages are you giving yourself?
Now that you have identified that you have negative self-talk, you can change the message. Sometimes, people find it helpful to write down the negative thing they were saying and then write down a positive replacement. For example, if you break a glass, you might say to yourself, "I'm such a butter fingers!" You can replace this with, "It's a bummer that the glass broke, but it's good that I didn't cut myself." This makes your mistake about what happened and does not attack you personally.
If you find that the negative tapes are playing, and you are having trouble finding a positive thing to say instead, you can use a technique called thought stopping. It is literally as simple as saying, "STOP!" It sort of shocks your brain into paying attention to you and cuts the tape off. You can say it out loud or silently, and it still works the same. Once you have shocked yourself into cutting off the tape, you can replace it by saying something positive even if it isn't related to what you were doing or what tapes were playing.
Positive affirmations are a great tool to use in all situations. I once listened to a tape that I had purchased that literally said, "I like myself." over and over. You can write positive notes to yourself and place them on your mirror, on your refrigerator, in your car - the more the better! Some ideas for positive affirmations that you can use are:
I am capable
I am happy
I only attract good things
I am smart
I make good decisions
People like me
I like myself
I believe in myself
If you google positive affirmations, you will come up with 100s of affirmations that you can use. Place them in your home, and more importantly, say them to yourself every day and any time you start thinking something negative.
Remember, the person you talk to the most is YOU so it's important to give yourself uplifting, positive messages!
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