Turn Negative Self Talk to Powerful Self Talk

Self-Talk.  What does yours say to you?  Do you say uplifting and empowering things to yourself, or do you tear yourself down?

I heard so many negative things as a kid that I believed I was no good.  My mother died of alcoholism when I was 12 but the years leading up to her death were horrendous for me as a kid.  As the alcohol took over her life she was always responding from a position of drunkenness and was often angry. 

She said and did many horrible things to me and told me I was no good constantly.  If all you hear is that you are no good you start to believe it.  If you never get told by your parents that they are proud of you or get encouragement or love, you start to believe you are those bad things that get told to you are really who you are.

As a result of this, my self-talk was constantly negative and I was always putting myself down until I did the work to release all those false beliefs and replace them with powerful, empowering and positive self-talk.

Nightbirde, a singer who auditions for America’s got talent said some very inspirational things during her audition.  If you haven’t seen the audition, view it here 

She is fighting cancer and she said the following:

When we realize we are so much more than the bad things that happen to us it’s a start to get beyond it.  For me personally, it wasn’t until I started to do some work on myself to eradicate the negative self-talk from my life that I started to believe that.  I constantly heard my mother’s voice in my head telling me I was no good.  I kept hearing this voice say who do you think you are, you are nobody, you are useless, you are a high school dropout. 

I heard this voice pretty much daily in the morning while getting ready for work.  I heard it throughout my military career and beyond.  When the voice inside tells you that you are bad or worthless, no other external voice will make you believe otherwise.  I won many awards in the military and was recognized for being an outstanding performer.  Yet inside I didn’t believe it, I thought they were just giving it to me.  I believed the voice inside that said I was a loser.  

Prov 16:24 says Kind Words are like Honey Sweet to the Soul and Healthy for the Body

If kind words are like honey and feed your soul and body, what do unkind words do?  How do unkind words affect you?  It can affect you both physically and mentally. If you don’t get a handle on it, you will be stuck in a loop of negativity for your life.

How can you stop negative self-talk in your life? There are many tools you can use.  The main thing to understand is you must do something to counteract the negativity that is permeating your being.  If you don’t replace that negativity with something else, it will stay there and keep you tied to the belief that you are no good, worthless or incapably of success.  For me I felt like I was always climbing uphill and getting knocked down. 

When I was in the military going to college, I was taking a psychology course.  The teacher had us take a survey about ourselves and I don’t remember what the survey was or what my score was but there were several levels from “you are ok” to “you are jacked up beyond belief and you better do something, or you are going to implode.”  My score was on the jacked up beyond belief scale.  I remember telling the teacher that and asking him what that means.  He said that I should consider counseling to work through whatever trauma I had experienced in order to heal from it. I wouldn’t do that work for another almost 20 years when I finally did implode.  These exercises I’m going to share are some of the things I did to heal.

I’m telling you this to urge you not to let it get that far.  While I healed and have peace of mind (the peace that surpasses understanding like it talks about in Philippians 4:6 in the Bible), it took a long time because I waited so long to deal with it.  The longer you wait, the longer the process is to work through it.  Don’t wait!

The following are tools that I used to help me eradicate the negative self-talk in my life.  You can use one or all of these tools.  I used them all, especially the Life Changing Procedure.  I suggest you take a look and work these into your life.  I’d love to hear your results in the comments section.

1. Use this Life Changing Procedure created by Zig Ziglar.  Saying this to yourself every day twice a day will change your life in how you see yourself. Click here to download.  
2. Ask yourself these questions.
   1. What do I absolutely LOVE about myself?
   2. What do I love about ______________
   3. What have I done to be of service today?
3. Guard your thoughts. Remember thoughts are things. What you think about you bring about.  Proverbs 4:23 Let God renew your mind because your life is shaped by your thoughts. 

If you do these things, you will definitely notice a difference in your attitude towards yourself and others.  The thoughts will start to change to be more positive than negative. 

I can say from my own experience that these simple tools changed the entire trajectory of my life.  Change your thoughts and you will change your world.

Nakupenda

Eldonna

PS.  I also shared about this on Swahili Sunday.  You can view that video in the previous post.