Is your self talk doing you damage?

What you say to yourself can sometimes be more damaging than what others say to you.

How often do you berate yourself for doing something wrong or making a mistake? How harsh are you?

For the most part, we are more harsh on ourselves than others are of us, and it is until we become conscious of the fact that we are doing this, that we can finally take control of it.

We all make mistakes and we all do things we may regret later, but these things are all part of learning. As long as you learn from your past mistakes, you can move on and make different choices next time.

The following steps will give you some idea of what you can try the next time you notice you’re talking negatively to yourself:

• First, be aware of what you say to yourself and why you are saying it.
• Instead of telling yourself that you were stupid for doing something wrong, reword it in your mind to be more like “Ok, that wasn’t the right thing to do. Next time I will do it like…whatever”.
• Compliment yourself when you do something well! Give yourself a mental pat on the back when you succeed!
• Reward yourself for your accomplishments! You don’t have to go all out – just do something nice for yourself!
• You MUST believe you deserve to be treated well, because if you begin to believe it, then your self talk will change. Change that and you will start to see people treating you differently (nice differently! :-)) and that makes you feel even better about yourself.

When you change how you speak to yourself and how you perceive yourself, the outside world changes dramatically. All of a sudden you see things differently and in a more positive light. More opportunities come your way, a different breed of people start to cross your path and things just seem to go right all of a sudden.

Try this over the next month and see what a difference it really can make to your entire life!