Imagine feeling more encouraged, positive, courageous, confident, forgiving, clear, productive, cared for, motivated, resilient, peaceful, kind, and happy. Imagine taking effortless action, harnessing the power of your brain to help you move forward towards your goals.
Sounds good, right?!
This post will help you to do it by improving your self talk. Described by Shad Helmstetter in the classic What To Say When You Talk To Your Self, your self talk is made up of all of the things you say to yourself, consciously or not, in your daily life. Studies show that we think over 6000 thoughts a day – most of them unconscious. The content of our thoughts is shaped by our social conditioning – the messages we receive from others and from the media, and lessons we learn when we were younger. We can become conditioned to think in ways that don’t serve us and the goals we’re trying to achieve, like having a scarcity mindset around money, or a believing that we need to receive external validation to feel worthy and good. These beliefs influence the way we relate to the world, what we do, and ultimately the results we get. To make matters even more tenuous, the human brain is biologically wired to look for the negative – this is called negativity bias (check out this article by Dr. Loretta Breuning to learn more). When we are always on guard and predicting that things will go poorly, we limit our perspective and are much more likely to notice the bad in life, instead of the good. So, it’s worth giving your self talk some serious attention and periodic re-tuning.
Here’s how:
- Get to know your baseline. For a few days, practise listening to your inner soundtrack and bringing the things you say to yourself into your conscious awareness. This can be more difficult than it sounds, so don’t skip this step! One way is to pause whenever you feel a new emotion pop up, or whenever you are about to start or end a task, and ask yourself “What am I thinking right now?” This step deepens your self-awareness, increases your emotional intelligence, and strengthens your ability to manage your brain and your thinking – which is a skill that can be practised and honed over time. Start looking for recurring themes in your default thoughts, and consider what results they’re giving you – how are they making you feel? What actions are they encouraging you to take? What is the ultimate outcome of this way of thinking? Practise exploring your baseline with curiosity, not judgement.
- Pick a focus area. Once you’ve gotten better at listening to your self talk, pick a topic that you’d like to work on for the next three weeks. You can pick a tangible goal, like quitting smoking or losing weight, or an intangible one like feeling more confident at work, more connected to your spouse, or more relaxed and peaceful. Once the three weeks is up, you can shift to a completely different focus area if you want to, so don’t worry too much about picking the ‘right’ thing. Just pick what feels important and impactful to you right now.
- Audit your current thinking about the focus area. Grab a piece of paper and divide it into two columns. Label the first “Current Thoughts” and the second column “Results.” In the first column, write down all the thoughts that immediately come to mind about your area of focus. Let it flow out freely. Don’t censor yourself. Put your pen to paper and don’t stop writing – keep the pen in motion until you fill up the column. Then in the “Results” column, write down how these thoughts make you feel and behave. For example, thinking “My job is so hard” makes me feel a pit in my stomach; a mix of worry and dread. I approach work with a focus on getting through the day, and with a bleak attitude.
- Identify what you want to change. Once you’ve gotten your default thinking and results on the page, take a moment to look at them. Identify what about them you want to change. Think about the results they are creating in your life and how you want them to be different.
- Generate your new self talk. Now, the fun part! Flip the paper over and divide it into two columns again. Label them “New Thoughts” and “New Results.” Your goal will be to identify 10-20 new thoughts that you want to practise thinking. Here are some tips:
- Write your desired thoughts in the present tense, i.e. write “I am confident in my own skills and abilities.” instead of “I want to be confident in my own skills and abilities.”
- Write your thoughts in the affirmative – write the things you want, not the things you don’t. Think about each individual word as an ingredient in a recipe; avoid any undesirable ingredients. I.e., write “I am full of ease and peace” instead of “I am not nervous.”
- If you’re not sure which thoughts to write, think about how you would like to feel and the results you’d like to have. Write those in the second column first, then write down what thought will help you. For instance, if you want to feel more confident when leading meetings at work, your thought might be “I am a confident speaker and can lead meetings with ease.”
- If you’re still not sure which thoughts to write, look at the reverse side of your paper, and try flipping your default thoughts around.
- Practise your new thoughts. Once you’ve identified 10-20 new thoughts and their associated results, the time has come to program this new self talk into your mind. Your goal here is to expose your brain to these new thoughts at least once a day for three weeks; this is how long it will take to start forming new neural pathways in your brain, and with daily practise, these pathways will help these new thought patterns become habitual. Here are two options:
- Post your list of new thoughts somewhere in your home where you’ll see them every day; read them at least once a day, either in your head or out loud.
- Record yourself saying the thoughts and listen to the recording daily (this won’t be as awkward as it sounds, I promise!).
- Let your brain do its thing. After time, you’ll start to notice your desired thoughts, emotions and behaviours will happen more often, without much conscious effort. Your brain loves familiarity, and will start looking for evidence for the new thoughts it’s hearing every day. The way you see things and the actions you take will start to shift. Enjoy the ride!
The amazing thing – and the thing we can leverage – is that your brain can’t tell whether a thought is true or not – your brain processes and reacts to every thought as if it were fact. The method outlined above will help you use this to your advantage.
Your self talk shows up most loudly when something has gone wrong. Next time something doesn’t go as you planned (and it will!), pay attention to the thoughts that automatically come to mind. Practise bringing those thoughts into your awareness. And ask yourself, what do those thoughts make you feel? Are they helpful to you? Are your thoughts representative of the kind of human you want to be? If not, then adjust accordingly.
Want help spotting your default thinking or exploring what you want? Get in touch for a free coaching consult.