What To Say When You Talk To Yourself

You ever get into that mind-spin where something negative happens and you start “What If’ing” yourself to death?    Really just grinding on it over and over in your mind.  Then you start to talk about that negative thought?

All things come from a thought first. 

You have to “think” it before you can say it.

Now the words that come out of your mouth will reinforce that thought.  Then you start to believe it just that much more.

Now if you consciously want to change something negative in your life, I’ve found that changing what you say about it is a place to start.

We’ll take weight loss as an example.  (It’s what I know…)

My vocabulary reflected my obese status:

Don’t mess with the Big Guy!

I’m fat but I’m happy!

I don’t care what others think!  I do my own thing!

I’m not going to live forever so I might as well enjoy it!

What these words translated to in my mind:

I’m using intimidation to cover the fact that I’m really insecure.

I wasn’t happy and was using reverse psychology on myself.

I did care what others thought, but convinced myself I didn’t.

I made light of not taking care of my health, so dying was an option.

You’ve always been a fat ass.  You’ll always be a fat ass.

I was fat in my mind and it translated into reality on my body.

You’ve likely got something like this in your life, I’d gamble to say.  Whether it’s smoking, being overweight, being depressed, being down on yourself for a bad relationship, being unhappy in general.  Whatever it is, you know in your heart of hearts what it is.

So what can be done about it?  How can you get that belief about yourself out?

Let’s reverse the work that I’ve done in my mind using what comes out of my mouth to show you a small example.

I removed this vocabulary from my life.  I replaced it with words that reflected what I wanted out of life, not what I had and wasn’t happy with.

Example:

I am healthy.

I weight 175 lbs.

I am a runner.

I am a cyclist.

I feel great!

Keep the sayings in the present tense.  Not future (I will, I’m gonna, Someday I might…).  Make it real and make it now!

I put sayings like this on paper.  At least once a day I read them (out loud) to myself.  Why?!

Because I still deal with the thought that I’m fat.  I have been working on removing that thinking.

I’ve been told that what you hear repeated in your inner ear, you retain the most.

At worst with this exercise, you’ll walk away feeling a little better about yourself.  A little more pep in your step.

A great book I would recommend, and plan on reading again, is “What To Say When You Talk To Yourself” by Shad Helmstetter.  I read it years ago.  I will read it again.  It taught me a lot about this concept.

It reinforces a lot of what little I covered here.

You are who you think you are.  You can change what you think by the words you use.  Either for the good the bad.

I heard the best analogy concerning your mind and removing negative thought.

“Your mind is like a bucket full of white paint.  As a child you hear this negative stuff that you believe about yourself.  We’ll call this black paint.  Now once that black paint is in your bucket, it starts to turn grey.  The more negative added, the more grey it becomes.  You have to reverse the process in your mind.  Add more and more positive, white paint into your mind.  And it will take a lot to change it back to white.  It’ll probably never get back to white.  But you have to dilute it enough to make the difference.”

Your words are like the paint.  You choose which color to add…

~Uppie