Introduction
In the manifesting community, they can stop repeating the phrase “thoughts become things”. What is more a thought that the internal conversations that we have with ourselves over and over again.
How you talk to yourself is a clear indication of how much you value yourself and how others are going to perceive you. In this post, we are going to discuss why and how you talk to yourself matters and what you can do to change those things that do not serve you anymore.
Our self-talk can be destructive
It was years ago that I heard this story and for some reason stuck with me:
A woman went on a date. She bought a new dress, dressed up and did her hair. As she sat at the bar, her date arrived and after a quick five minutes he stood up and said: “ This is just not for me”. She was devastated and called a friend and the friends say “of course he left, you are ugly, overweight and have no sense of style, what did you expect?” The problem here is that there was no friend. She said that to herself.
No friend will tell you that after a rejection. And yet, we can be the cruelest when we are talking to ourselves.
How you talk to yourself matters
If you remember that most of the information received is processed by the subconscious and stored for later use. You should conclude that your conscious self-talk is also stored as true information by your subconscious.
Most of our communication is only perceived by the subconscious. The subconscious is responsible for most of the automatic responses of the body. You might have heard that in interviews the first 5 seconds decide the outcome. The rest of the conversation is only to reassure that initial impression. The same applies to the rest of your interactions.
The subconscious takes everything you say as truth
Unlike the conscious mind, the subconscious doesn’t have the capacity to discern the truth when it comes to your internal self-talk, and why would it? If you think about it, why on earth would you lie to yourself? And yet, as the woman from the example that blamed herself for someone else’s decision, you could get in the trap of negative self-talk and hinder your success in any and every area of your life.
You might have experienced that similar scenarios keep repeating in your life. I call this “the deja vu effect”. Our subconscious plays the same scenario in the same way as we have experienced before. Our subconscious repeats body responses and mental patterns in an exact way. This makes it impossible to get a different outcome. That is the power of the subconscious.
The subconscious plays out your beliefs
In a previous post, I discussed how we create limiting beliefs. For you to have the gist of it, the basic idea that beliefs are stories we tell ourselves as we assume as absolute truth even if they are not.
If you were to portrait yourself as unsuccessful and convinced yourself of that as truth. Your subconscious will simply agree and play out that scenery in reality. How? Well, remember that your subconscious control basically all your body functions, from heart rate to breathing and most of your internal communication and rapport is non-verbal communication. Do you see the issue now?
How can you break “the deja vu effect”
The first thing to do in my opinion, it’ll always be to take the position of the observer. Every time you encounter an event that displeases you, stop. Take a hard look at what is going on, ask the questions: “why am I feeling this way?” and go as deep as you can, trying to find the root cause of the issue. And then, ask yourself is that cause true and accurate or just a memory or belief that is no longer serving you.
Noticing your discomfort is the best way to face the situation. It stops on its beginnings the negative self-talk because you can’t draw judgement without a previous thorough examination of the situation.
Implement mental diets
Besides looking at the cause of your discomfort and debunking it, training your mind to think positively is the fastest way to achieve results. The only issue appears when we have been used to negative self-talk. Breaking the habit could be difficult. Emmet Fox suggests mental diets as a way to break the rat race of negative thinking. I have to agree.
Mental diets are not easy. You have to actively monitor your thoughts and let go of the negative thought patterns. Most authors claim that you can break those mental patterns in as little as 7 days. In my experience less than 7 days, although I have to say that the pay off is massive.
What benefits can be expected when we improve our self-talk
It is not in my nature to do anything that doesn’t bring me clear payoffs. It is my belief that time is the most precious commodity. So what can you expect in exchange for your efforts?
- Deep self-understanding. – You will move from living in autopilot to a more conscious state of mind. Understanding why you do things will give you more control over the direction of your life.
- Conscious living. – The moment your thoughts are directed towards what you want instead of running away from pain, the exterior seems to reflect those changes. The reality is that your nonverbal communication has changed and it reflects on the exterior in people, events and circumstances.
- Increased self-esteem. – Understanding who you are and why as well as taking a clear direction in life will massively increase your self-esteem and your overall happiness.
Conclusion
Numerous books have been written about how to talk to yourself and now you know the reason. Your self-talk determines the outcome of your life in more ways than you could imagine.
In my personal experience changing my self-talk allowed me to get healthy, get great jobs and personal relationships. All of that only by being nice to myself. Honestly, if you think about it being nice to yourself shouldn’t be that hard. If you expect it from a friend you might as well expect it from your own self.
