honesty. What words do you really feel strongly about? The best way to start is to
think of a time where you felt or performed great. Really consider it.
How did you feel? What emotions did you feel? What did the experience look like? (yeah a bit of visualization). Now start listing the words you are using to describe those feelings and emotions.
Recheck ever so often. Some words will start to lose their affect after a while due to new experiences, change in beliefs/ mindset, etc.
The key here is to practice. The more you work on improving your self-talk, the easier it will become. See Dr. McKay’s article How to break bad habits using neuroscience.
Did You Know...
A few years ago the National Science Foundation published an article regarding research about human thoughts per day. The average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before. People generate negative thoughts so automatically they are unaware that it is happening. Why?
It’s because the brain is wired to avoid pain or negative (bad) situations more so than to gain pleasure (good).
Our brain is biologically wired to protect us from both physical and emotional threats. Bad is interpreted as danger and if something is bad (real or perceived) or even just uncomfortable, our brain wants avoid it to keep us safe. Good doesn’t threaten our life so it doesn’t get the intense attention that bad does. Bad is processed faster and more thoroughly than good and is quickly stored in our long term memory.
While this negative biological bias kept our ancestors alive thousands of years ago when every day was a life and death battle, it’s a “bug” in our system today.
Repetition = familiarity = plausibility
Research has shown that the more someone hears something the more they believe it’s true. In other words, each time someone hears a statement either internally or externally, the plausibility of that statement increases and they become more and more certain that it’s true. Even if the statements are actually false! Our brain many times confuses familiarity with truthfulness. It’s a phenomenon called the Illusion of Truth Effect.
So taken the fact that 80% of our thoughts are negative and 95% are exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before you can see how we begin to believe the negativity unless we change them. Repetition increases our mental validation of anything we’re exposed to (positive/ negative, truthful/ false), which is why it works so well in advertising and political propaganda.
19