Well, we all have been exploring and talking much about working on effective communication skills, making impressive presentations, being excellent public speakers, building our networking skills and creating an extraordinary executive presence in board rooms.
Yet, how many times have we ever paused and explored about our self talk? When did you last stretched to stop and checked the negative phrases that you used for yourself today, yesterday and from past many many years? How often have you cursed yourself saying, “I’m stupid”, “I don’t know”, “how come I couldn’t figure out such basic stuff”? “She is better than me”, “he’s better than me”, “they are better than me”, “everyone is better than me”, “No I can’t do this”. “I have never done this before…” and the list can continue relentlessly.
Surprisingly, this is not just your list but almost we all have our own versions wherein the talk that we make to ourselves is far more inferior than what we ever do to others. Nevertheless, if the same statements are used by others for us, we get upset, blame them, curse them or ever cut our relations with them, forever. Lest, realizing that we do this to ourselves all the time. Have you ever observed this paradox in yourself?
Based on my personal experience, I’ll share an interesting three-dimensional approach to resolve this paradox.
3 Dimensional Approach
- One to identify these negative unconscious thoughts
- To dispute them by checking their validity
- To substitute with more positive real useful thoughts.
As a matter of fact, these negative self talks if not questioned will become automatic negative thoughts that’ll act as weeds in your garden of positive thinking and hindrance in progressive growth pattern of your life. I know how our self talk impacts the way we perceive ourselves and our world. What impact it can create in shaping our thinking, behaviour and personality.
Before, we realize, we are engulfed in the vicious cycle of low esteem and victim mentality. It is equally important to identify that from moving from one extreme end of poor self esteem, you do not jump to other extreme end of spectrum of false sense of self, high ego. That too will be detrimental wherein we create a false sense that there’s no one better than me.
I’m the supreme with no scope of improvement. This too will lead you nowhere. Simply because this is just a false layer that we are creating secretly trying to hide our insecurity. I would request you to read this again and check if this resonates. This is something that took me a long time and that too with deep self work (which was of course a lot hard work) that I figured this out for myself.
So, to ensure that we truly identify the true areas to work on, let me share with you a personal guided step by step approach that works superbly well for me, every time. This is a simple guided process that works like a wonder and can help us to shift our mindset from feeling low and hopeless to upbeat and full of possibilities.
Step 1: Observe how you feel when your self talk is demeaning to yourself.
Step 2: Now Check what made you say this to yourself.
Step 3: Question yourself: Is this true?
Step 4: Take a deep breath and ask yourself again: Is this really true? (Pause and think again…being true to yourself.
Step 5: What counter evidence can you think that’ll prove you wrong. (take your time… I promise you’ll have loads of evidences to prove your negative self talk wrong)
Step 6: Now, Replace this Negative Unconscious Talk with more powerful and useful statement.
Step 7: Be in this space for some time and let it soak completely in you.
Step 8: Next, Imagine, the situation gets repeated (in any other variety or form) in your life… How are you going to deal with it?
Step 9: Time to replace the negative self talk with the powerful useful statement that you identified in step 6.
Step 10: Take a deep breath and check how is this making you feel now? Smile… You Have Done It. You are stepping towards your goal of an ‘evolved being’.
Conclusion
Trust this simple 10-Step Approach works for you as much as it works for me, every time. The words that we use for ourselves unconsciously work towards shaping our thinking. This thinking become our actions and finally get reflected in our behaviour. This persistent behaviour shapes our personality. So, before you realize, they have become you. And you find it hard to make this distinction. Important is to be mindful. Your awareness will consequently lead you towards action. This action when repeated over a period of time, gets deeply anchored within you. This becomes your natural state. People around you will find you magnetic, charismatic and highly positive.
Would you like to work on the Science of Self Talk (The Art of Inverting Negative Self Talk to Positive Self Talk) and make difference to the world? I invite you to join our Life Coaching Training Program at ACC level and PCC level.
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