The endless assortment of messages, feelings and attitudes we bring from our past into our present influences how we see ourselves. It also directly impacts our ability to relate to others. Your self image serves as a sieve, filtering every experience and interaction and creates a running inner dialogue. You talk to yourself constantly about all your experiences – what you think about yourself, the way you see others, how they react to you and how you relate to them – it never stops. This ongoing , internal dialogue is your “self talk,” and it goes with you everywhere. When these private conversations are positive, they support you and work in your best interest. When they are negative, they are destructive and demoralizing.
Negative self-talk belittles your potential, makes you feel undeserving and unworthy, and inhibits the achievement of your dreams, including enjoying fabulous relationships. It chatters on and on, often spinning out of control, feeding your brain messages that you blindly accept as your truth.
To override the destructive messages that formerly ran your personal operating system (you!), delete the misinformation by installing a new program – positive self talk. To accomplish this, change your negative self talk to positive. Here are a few examples from the book, “Get Along with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere” by Arnold Sanow and Sandra Strauss. Change the following:
- My presentation will be terrible to everyone will love my presentation.
- I always seem to say the wrong things! to I know the right things to say!
- I have a hard time making friends to I’m good at making friends.
- I have to go to this meeting to I get to go to this meeting
- I’ll never get it right to I keep working toward what I really want, no matter
- what.
- I don’t know anyone here and I’m terrible at meeting new people to there are
- many interesting people to meet here. Let’s see what I can discover about
- them.
- I’ll never make this sale to every person I meet is an opportunity to enhance
- my selling skills.