Positive self-talk and having a more optimistic outlook can enhance your performance, your well-being and contribute to greater life satisfaction. When negative events or mistakes happen, positive self-talk seeks to bring the positive out of the negative to help you do better, go further, or just keep moving forward.
An important step in becoming more resilient is to develop positive self-talk (your internal dialogue), to remind yourself that you are strong and can handle life’s challenges. If your inner self mostly interprets events and experiences negatively, this can affect your resilience in a big way.
You may be perceiving events in your life as more stressful than they need to be. You may be attributing negative motivations to people who are well meaning or seeing yourself as less equipped to handle challenges than you actually are. If you have a habitual pattern of focusing on more negatives than positives in your life, then you are missing out on the silver linings in a situation.
Become conscious of your internal dialogue and thought patterns Perhaps you don’t realise how often you say negative things to yourself and how this affects your experiences. Two strategies that can help you become more aware are journaling and interrupting your negative thoughts.
Journaling is an effective technique for examining your inner process. So, you could carry your notebook around with you for a day and write down negative comments and thoughts as they arise, or you write a summary of your thoughts at the end of the day. Another technique is to write about your feelings on a particular topic and then go back and notice any negative content.
Interrupt your negative thoughts as you notice yourself saying them in your mind by saying “That’s enough, I’m not listening to you today.” Saying this aloud will make you more aware of how many times you have negative thoughts, and when specifically. Of course, it may not be practical to say aloud but do say this sentence, or similar to yourself. Perhaps you could keep a tally of how many thoughts you need to interrupt.
Ways to change your internal dialogue:
Milder Wording: Changing powerful negative words to more neutral ones can help defuse a situation. So instead of using words like ‘hate’ and ‘angry’ as in, “I hate traffic. It makes me so angry knowing I’m going to be late.” you could use milder words such as “I don’t like traffic, I’m annoyed that I might be late.” Notice the difference in your tone of voice and the milder feelings it evokes in your body.
Rethink your assumptions: As you find yourself mentally complaining about something, rethink your negative assumptions and turn it around. For example, a meeting is cancelled at the last minute and you are annoyed because it took a lot of juggling to fit it in but what you do with your newly-freed time can be what you make of it. The next time you find yourself stressing about something or deciding you’re not up to a challenge, stop and rethink, and see if you can come up with a positive replacement.
Ask yourself questions: Negative statements like “I will never get a new client.” or “I have so much work to do, I’m drowning in it.” increase your stress levels AND stop you from searching for solutions. So when you find yourself saying something that limits you, ask yourself a question. For example “Who can help me brainstorm how to get new clients?” or “What’s the next best thing I can do to reduce my workload?” These questions give us hope and open your mind to possibility an finding solutions.
Turning negative self-talk into positive self-talk.
A good way to change the habit of negative statements is to replace them with something better.
Negative: I’ve never done this before and I’ll be bad at it. Positive: This is a great opportunity for me to learn and grow.
Negative: I failed and embarrassed myself. Positive: I’m proud of myself for trying. That took courage.
Negative: I’ll disappoint everyone if I change my mind. Positive: I have the power to change my mind. Others will understand.
It takes practise to create a new habit but over time you can learn to shift your inner dialogue to be more uplifting, so that it becomes your natural instinct.
Ways to help you create this new habit
Surround yourself with positive people. We can absorb the outlook and of people around us, so choose to hang out with positive people when you can.
Identify negative self-talk situations. Certain situations may trigger you emotionally and challenge your new inner positive dialogue. Pinpointing when you experience the most negative self-talk can help you prepare by rethinking your assumptions of the situation or person and asking yourself good questions such as “How can I best approach this situation?”
Expose yourself to positive stimulus. Sometimes, seeing and hearing positive words or inspiring images can be enough to redirect your thoughts. Listen to podcasts, read uplifting books, do something you love every day. A friend and I message each other our 3 good things of that happened that day, which brings a positive vibe to our friendship and leaves me thinking good things before I go to sleep.
Which of these strategies are you going to practice first?