As a human mind, our thoughts are produced innumerably in the day. While some of the thoughts are conscious, most of our thoughts are subconscious. Most of us continue to have a running dialogue in our minds throughout which is known as self-talk. Our thoughts continually running in the background while we are awake or asleep. These thoughts can be in the form of reminding yourself what needs to be done, giving yourself some instructions, making decisions, making mental notes while doing certain activity, repeating certain observations that are noticed from the environment or reciting specific positive or negative statement to self.
As the word suggests, ‘Self-talk’ is a form of internal dialogue that we have with ourselves. The way we talk about ourselves, the language that we use to describe ourselves has a huge impact on our mindset, which thereby affects our reality. It is extremely important to monitor the way we speak to ourselves as it deeply affects our self-esteem and self worth as well. The way to choose to define ourselves or the events that we go through has a huge impact on how we feel about ourselves or the event itself.
You may have noticed some people who use negative words to represent themselves. For example, ‘I hate myself for being such a coward’ or ‘ I know I will never be happy regardless of how much I try, some people are just born unlucky’. When you participate in negative self-talk without your knowledge you are transmitting these messages into your subconscious mind when repeated over a period of time, which then creates the reality accordingly.
When a child is born he/she is born as a blank slate without any prefixed personality. We become who we are today based on the messages being constantly delivered and repeated to us by our parents, teachers, relatives, friends etc. While some parents promote positive talk using words like beautiful, smart, healthy, confident etc to represent their kids, some parents use negative words like stupid, coward, black sheep of family, ugly etc. What we don’t realize is that in this process children grow up to become what they are based on the positive or negative words constantly repeated to them over a period of time.
While this process is initially wired by our parents during childhood, it is our responsibility to mold it during adulthood. Self-talk is an internal narrative that we hold about ourselves. It largely contributes to how we end up feeling about ourselves. If you don’t think highly about yourself or don’t feel good about yourself, it is time to be conscious and reflect on your self-talk.
If you closely observe and monitor your self-talk you will realize that your self-talk is a combination of your conscious as well as subconscious thoughts and beliefs which can either stem from your own experiences over the course of your life or are simply taken from your parental language used during childhood.
Negative self-talk can be detrimental as constant exposure to the same increases our stress while decreasing our self esteem and self worth as these are the messages consistently sent to our brain to program the same. Various researches believe that positive self-talk reduces our stress and anxiety levels to a large extent, makes us feel confident and good about ourselves, gives us the ability to cope better with difficult situations, helps us to build positive and meaningful relationships with others.
How to use positive self-talk more often?
Identify negative self-talk
In order to make a change, you need to monitor your thoughts consciously. Become aware of the negative messages you are feeding to your brain. The easiest way is to observe your thoughts when you are experiencing overwhelming emotions. For example, what do you say to yourself when you have failed in a particular task? Most often negative thoughts, beliefs and statements arise when things don’t work out the way we have presumed they would.
Examples of few negative statements:
I’m not good enough;
I always make the wrong choices;
Nothing ever works out for me;
People will always leave me cause there is something wrong with me;
I don’t think I’ll ever learn from my mistakes;
I an very unlucky;
I’ve never been good at anything.
Understanding the cause
Once your identify the negative statements that you are feeding to your mind, ask yourself where are they coming from? It becomes difficult to make changes when we don’t understand where certain things come from. Understand the reasons behind certain beliefs make us more ready to bring about positive changes.
Modify your statements with positive
Once you are conscious of your negative self talk, make it a point to modify the negative statement into a positive one every time you become aware of your thought process. Writing down all your negative beliefs about self can really help for us to be more aware of it as well. Understand that changes will not occur overnight. To change our internal dialogue you need constant awareness, practice and effort. Don’t be afraid to seek professional help from a psychotherapist if needed.
