I've suddenly felt inspired to write about something that I've found myself thinking and talking about to a number of people recently.
The first part to discuss is negative self talk. I guess you could call this the technical term for seemly innocuous little comments you make to yourself like, "I'm such an idiot", "I'm just being dumb", "Gees, I'm so stupid sometimes", or "I can't do that. I'm just no good at it." You get the picture.
Despite this sort of self talk coming into my awareness about 12 years ago it's still something I have to work on every day. But that said it's now much better. Interestingly, when I get down I tend to let myself get away with saying these things, which then drives me down further. Breaking out of the habit of saying these impulsive comments to yourself can really help turn your thought process more positive. And although it can take a while it's not a complicated process.
When I've taught instruments to students, let's say guitar for illustration purposes, and they ask "how do you get your left hand to move so little and so quickly and exactly?" I explain that step one is becoming aware of what you want to change. Simply being aware that you don't want your little finger to move so far back when it's changing positions will result in the finger moving less, simply because you're aware that it's moving further than you want it to.
Once you're aware then you simply have to say to yourself "don't do that any more - do this" every time you notice the thing you want to change. The last step is going slowly and being patient with yourself. The change won't happen overnight, but if you are persistent yet patient at the same time you will suddenly notice one day that the change has occurred and you don't think about it anymore, or at least very little.
This is what has to be done to manage negative self talk. Firstly, notice when you do it. Secondly, tell yourself that this is a destructive thought and that what you're saying to yourself is not true, it is just negative. Thirdly, don't let yourself get away with it - EVER. Be persistent but be patient. It will take a while and you will still do it from time to time but all you need to know is that you're noticing it, telling yourself not to do it, then continuing on without getting frustrated with yourself over it.
Soon enough these negative thoughts will turn up very infrequently, if at all. At which time you will very likely notice that your life has made some positive changes for the better also. At very least in regard to your self-esteem and feelings of confidence and happiness with yourself.
Feeling happy with yourself is a big part of the happiness of life. If you break down what makes you unhappy in life you will probably be surprised how often it comes back to something like "I made a bad decision", whether it was very recently or years ago, or "I wanted to achieve more than this by my age", or "I can never get that thing to change! Why? I'm so useless!" If you focus on removing the negative self talk then you will find a new-found positive attitude towards yourself which will quite likely see life improve in many areas.
But there is more to this I think. I'm not saying that you should never feel down about anything, even if this means feeling annoyance, anger or sadness (etc...) with yourself or something that's happened in your life. You have a right to feel down sometimes, and you probably have very good reason. The problem is not that you feel down. The problem is how you react to these feelings. These are negative feelings by nature. But the energy they create can, with an adjusted perspective, breed positivity rather than more negativity.
I'm going to leave it there though and write more on that tomorrow as I don't want this to go any longer than it already has. Thanks for reading and I hope you come back tomorrow to read part 2.
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