Is Negative Self Talk and Self Esteem Affecting You?
By Charles Harmon
How often do you talk to yourself during the day? When I was growing up as a child I remember my parents telling me don’t talk to yourself. I have heard that over the years and don’t know all the background behind it. I think most of us do talk to ourselves sometimes. A lot of times that’s negative self talk.
It could be just muttering or maybe just sounding out the sentences in our minds. Nevertheless it would not be unusual to hear someone talking to themselves. Sometimes people make fun of other’s self talk. Basically if our self talk is of a positive nature (and quite often it is not) it helps our self esteem and hurts our self esteem if of a negative nature. This applies to your thoughts too.
What we say to ourselves each day reinforces our self-image and can either raise or lower our self-esteem. There is a book by Barbara Levine titled, “Your body believes every word you say” that is useful in seeing this connection. Other books point out similar things about our thoughts and words playing a big part of who we are and what occurs in our lives. If that’s true, and it seems to be, then negative self talk definitely should be replaced with good and positive thoughts whenever possible.
Do you find yourself during the day with negative self talk or thoughts such as, “I gave a poor presentation” or “She does things so much faster than me” or “People never call me back”? If so, give yourself an assignment each day to pick one negative self-statement you say and re-write it positively.
If you’re really a negative person make that a super-size of two or three negative statements you’ll need to rewrite. For instance, if you said, “I never do anything well” take time to question this. You may then be able to write, “I am good with computers” or “I am a loving mom” or “I excel at being a nerd”.
Sure you may not be the fastest runner in your gym class or give a flawless presentation in your speech class, which you hate, but look at your good qualities and keep them in mind. It may seem a bit unnatural to say nice things about yourself, but why spend your energy reinforcing negative thoughts?
We need to reframe what we say that is self-deprecating and replace that with positive self-statements. That will not only help our self esteem, but will help change us into a more positive, and maybe more successful person.
If you find you keep buying into thoughts that put yourself down ask yourself if those negative thoughts help you feel good about yourself. If the answer is no, what is the point of thinking and repeating them over and over again like a mantra?
You’ll find that as you get more comfortable with positive thoughts about yourself it actually will make you cringe to hear the negative, self-destructive ones. With practice,
you’ll be able to see your progress by seeing how uncomfortable you are with your old inner dialogues and negative self talk about yourself.
It may be hard to believe right now, but some of your current thoughts will disappear as the new you develops and grows. Just like there are extreme makeover shows for one’s appearance, working with your thoughts helps you to do an inner self help makeover.
If possible, and this is not always the case, you should try to associate yourself with others that have a positive outlook on things. It’s real difficult to keep a positive attitude if one is living with or married to someone with a negative attitude and lots of negative talk or self talk about everyone else and/or themselves.
If that is the case try to find some solitude and quiet time away from the distractions of hearing negative words about others or how bad this or that is. Lock yourself in the bathroom, get home a little later from work and spend the extra time writing, thinking, or saying reinforcing positive thoughts. On weekends cut the grass and take an extra long time doing it, or whatever you can do to have some quiet time to think or write positive things about yourself and your situation.
It may not seem like it, but over time every little bit helps. You’ll build up your self esteem by eliminating the negative self talk and in the process get yourself poised for a revitalized, more successful you.
Copyright © Charles Harmon
Charles is a software developer. He is also interested in internet marketing for spare cash. As a sports car enthusiast Charles is thinking of getting new hot rims for his Corvette. He has been researching Internet Marketing and has a found some real money saving and money making information products and services. He is now working on this new site for online dating information.
Published by admin on August 28th, 2007 tagged Self-esteem, Negativity
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October 5th, 2007 at 3:07 am
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October 9th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
[…] admin wrote a fantastic post today on “Is Negative Self Talk and Self Esteem Affecting You?”Here’s ONLY a quick extractWe need to reframe what we say that is self-deprecating and replace that with positive self-statements. That will not only help our self esteem, but will help change us into a more positive, and maybe more successful person. … […]
October 12th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
[…] Is Negative Self Talk And Self Esteem Affecting You? […]