Self Talk Part 2, Be Our Own Best Friend

We may indeed have decided that we really do want to achieve our stated goal. But unprepared, the self-talk going on in our head can still blast us out the moment we hit the first obstacle. But it can be changed!

All too often we can hear not one but two voices within us arguing with each other, particularly when our dilemma over something is acute! If the negative voice wins out, the speed with which the doubt created by our self-talk can strike is both formidable and of crippling effect.

Even suppose our picture of our goal is vivid, convincing and carries our over-riding commitment. Unless we keep telling ourselves that it is definitely and totally what we want and that we are up to the challenge, our ship is cognitively holed below the water line by the inner voice!

Now try this exercise! Make time to listen to people talk around you and you can hear so often the same dilemma you have within, being discussed by them out loud. You can hear family members, friends or employers talking up those around them and encouraging the best in them. Or you may hear the same people talking apparent opportunities down, and worse, talking others down and reinforcing the worst in them.

The truth is we each already know instinctively the part we can play so easily in this. We can help a conversation to become positive or negative. Surely one mini goal we should all have is never knowingly to talk anyone down, least of all ourselves.

It is a fact that the more that we talk others up, the more we are likely to talk ourselves up too. It is a frame of mind! Just reflect on some of the damning things you know you say to yourself about you under your breath sometimes. Imagine!

If a friend said the same things to you about you with the same conviction and out loud, just how long would you stay friends with them! Not a minute longer! So why do we do it?

But what is happening inside our heads when this is all going on under our breath.

Each time we do it, we feed the same deep-seated, damaging self-image of ourselves. Instead of feeding it, we should be killing it off by starvation!

So be your own best friend in terms of everything you say to yourself.

Stop maligning yourself, doubting yourself and undermining constructive moves you make.

If you want to look for example of how to do this, again you have to look no further than sports stars in the top echelon of their sport. Interviewed after a below average performance, they never run themselves down and they are already reflecting positively in regard to their next encounter.

The greater, the more complex and challenging your goal is, then be prepared to be even more of close friend to yourself Why, because the sheer scale of the challenge can make it more likely that it is the self-doubt that will kick in and set the negative self-talk in motion. The key to this is finding and directing our preferred mental mind game to fend off the negative messages, neutralise and even silence them.

So now you know, will you just go and do it? If only if it were that simple! You will need to practise and practise. I am afraid it is a skill to be acquired as well as understood.

Try it before reading more in Part 3