Don’t do it that way – you idiot, you failed again!
How come you’re so damned stupid? See, I told you, you’d give up again!
Does all of this sound a bit too familiar? No, this isn’t an excerpt from a Hollywood movie, and it isn’t even a conversation between two friends – who on earth would talk to a friend like that?!
This isn’t even a conversation you’d normally hear between two human beings. Even if you heard such things from parents or teachers when you were a child, who’s talking now?
The sad truth is that this is a conversation most of us have had with ourselves at one time or another. OK, that’s normal. But if it’s the voice we hear more than others, it’s become our inner bully.
You’ve got it – we’re talking about the power of self-talk, the way you make – or break! – your relationship with yourself.
We all carry on some sort of a self-dialogue – it’s that tiny voice in the back of our head letting us know how well our decisions and actions fit with the person we expect ourselves to be.
It’s that tiny voice that makes you feel better or worse about yourself.
It’s the tiny voice that more often than not, feels like the commanding center of YOU. Think about it: how often have you felt exactly the way your tiny voice wanted you to feel?
A bit too often, I’d say.
And while the voice in our head is sometimes reasonable and stops you from making the wrong choices in life, it can often be way too critical, too much of a perfectionist, and never happy with you, no matter what you do. That’s the inner bully.
But what’s even worse than the dreadful, negative self-talk is that most of the time, you’re not even aware you’re talking to yourself – or should I say, criticizing yourself?
So you spend your life listening to what your biggest critic – yourself! – is saying to you every day, all day long … you’re not good enough, you’re a failure anyway, you’ll never be happy, blah, blah, blah!
Slowly, you start believing what you have to say to yourself – after all, you wouldn’t lie to yourself now, would you?
Why would you want you to feel miserable?
Why would you want you to fail every time you try to do something?
Why would you do this to you – on purpose?
Aaah, perhaps we need to make a distinction here.
While a healthy dose of self-awareness is always welcome in life, and acknowledging your flaws & weaknesses can help you more than you think, focusing on them is a recipe for disaster.
Think of the self-talk as a way of cheering yourself on – I bet that a team of cheerleaders yelling “you suck!” whenever their team does something wrong would be considered the worst cheerleading group in history!
On the other hand, if you think about it, how many times has a team won last-minute just because their cheerleading group was cheering loud and their coach was supportive even though they’d been losing the game big time?
Here’s a little secret that I’ll let you in on:
All people like it when someone compliments them and gives them attention or makes them feel understood and appreciated. Positive always wins over the negative – and we, human beings, are made to thrive on positivity.
Try and remember how many times a simple compliment or a smile from a stranger made your day.
Or bigger and more important things for yourself – feeling appreciated and acknowledged by your friends, family, partner, coworkers. We all know how a thank you from our partner for cooking dinner or a simple “job well done” from our boss makes us feel good.
So why don’t you learn how to give that to yourself?
Training yourself not to give any kind of self-talk is impossible – but training yourself to talk positively to yourself is very much possible and desired.
Now, I’m not talking here about living an illusion about your own life and your own surroundings – that’s never a good idea.
My point is that no matter how bad your circumstances may seem at the moment, instead of wasting your time and energy on criticizing yourself about it, it might be good to try and think of ways to accept that and work around those circumstances, bit by bit.
You need to become your own biggest cheerleader – and not your biggest critic!
By changing the way you talk to yourself, you’ll discover that positive criticism is a very good way to get things done!
You’ll begin to let go of the anger, frustration and fear that’s been holding you back for ages.
You’ll become a better person – kinder, more compassionate and more grateful for the life you’ve managed to build for yourself.
And we all know the world needs a few more people like that.
Are you feeling confused about how to start changing the way you talk to yourself? If that’s the case, get in touch and let’s talk.
Not only will you discover more about yourself so you get to the roots of your negative self-talk … you’ll also begin to change the negative into positive and finally become your biggest supporter.
It’s your life! Get to livin’ – today.
Eric
