How do you talk to yourself?
Do you ever find yourself talking to yourself in a negative way? Why talk to yourself that way if you wouldn’t speak that way to others? Advancedlifeskills.com is a great blog that explores ways to live a better, more productive life – professionally, personally, and mentally. In sales and professional relationships, it is crucial that we like ourselves in order to have selling power for and toward others.
3 Ways to Empower Yourself with Positive Self Talk ~ from advancedlifeskills.com
1. Build yourself up. If you’ve gotten used to tearing yourself down, you may not even notice how harshly you speak to yourself. To turn this around, you simply need to make a conscious choice to use self-talk to build yourself up as often as possible. Begin a new habit of speaking encouragingly and expressing positive thoughts about yourself and your abilities. For example, instead of referring to yourself as an idiot when you make a mistake, remind yourself that everyone makes mistakes and experience is what helps us to improve.
In addition, make some time every day to look at yourself in the mirror and find three positive things to say about yourself. You can compliment your physical features, personality traits, abilities or accomplishments. We all have our strong points so be sure you make the time to use self-talk to acknowledge yours.
Most importantly, always speak to yourself in the same way you would speak to a good friend who is in need of support and encouragement. You would never call them names or say mean things to them, so don’t use self-talk to do those things to yourself either!
2. Be your own cheerleader. Rather than avoiding a difficult task because you doubt your own abilities, use self-talk to become your own cheerleader. When you’re getting ready to tackle something challenging, take a few minutes to give yourself a mental pep talk. Express confidence in the fact that “you can do this.”
Also, be sure to regularly commend yourself for a job well done and don’t limit your expressions of approval to just the big accomplishments. If you gave something your best effort, then go ahead and acknowledge that. For example, you could say to yourself, “I’m really proud of the way I handled that rude customer. I kept my cool the whole time.” Or, “I’m so proud of myself for finishing that project before deadline.”
Next, find some way to reward yourself so that your expressions of approval are linked to tangible benefits. This will do wonders to build your sense of self confidence.
3. Love yourself unconditionally. We all have things about ourselves that we want to improve, but our love for ourselves should not be conditional on making those improvements. It is important that we love ourselves, not for the things we’ve done or plan to do, but for who we are. Love your uniqueness, your personality, your character traits and everything else that makes you who you are.
The more you allow yourself to feel your own love and approval, the better you will feel about your life. In turn, the easier it will be for positive self-talk to become your natural tendency.
Do it anyway
You may feel a little self conscious following some of these self-talk suggestions at first because they might be considerably different from the way you normally treat yourself. You need to do it anyway because the more you practice them, the easier and more natural they will feel.
Before you know it, those old, negative recordings that used to undermine you will be a thing of the past. They will have been replaced with encouraging and empowering messages created through the power of positive self-talk.