We react to Self-Talk the same way. We start off telling ourselves that we can do something and start putting the cards in place, but if one of our cards get knocked over taking out over half of our tower with it, starting again seems a little harder. If this happens more than once we might give up. Now we don’t tell that to anyone, we say things like “I didn’t really want to do that anyway,” or “I’m not really cut out for that.” But inside you know that you really wanted it to happen. My point here is that staying on top of your self-talk is hard work but it gets easier as you go.
Our words have power. If you say “I’m happy,” to yourself, how does that feel, pretty good right? Now if you say “I’m sad,” to yourself it’s a very different feeling. The research has shown that our brain pays more attention to our negative thoughts then our positive one when they happen because they are looked at as a threat thanks to the wiring left over from our ancestors. The best way to get around that is to have three to five positive thoughts to every negative one.
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How do you make it work for you? Here are the nuts and bolts. Telling yourself what you want, and then sitting back and waiting for it to happen is not going to work. You must follow it with action. Sorry but there are no short cuts here. You must walk your self-talk. If you look at the research and there is a lot of it out there. It all says the same thing. Remember Roger Bannister; he ran the mile in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds on May 6, 1954 breaking the four-minute mile. Which back then everyone thought was physically impossible. Roger put both body and mind to work. He alone was able to create that certainty in himself without seeing any proof that it could be done. You can do the same thing.
Let your self-talk be your coach and start paying attention to how you are talking to yourself. You are the one controlling your thoughts. Even if your positive thoughts are silly; they’ll still enhance your sense of happiness, and well-being. You can say “I can” or “I can’t.” It’s up to you what you chose. I’ll close with a quote from Gandhi “A man is but a product of his own thoughts. What he thinks he becomes.”
Namaste,
Christopher
