What conversation do you have with yourself?

We speak to ourselves more than we realize and the majority of our “natural thoughts” are negative. Our self-talk influences our wellbeing. What conversation do you have with yourself?

Our brain was made to help us survive. The main function of our brain is to protect our wellbeing, to tell us when we need to eat, to sleep and especially: when there is danger. Our evolutionary history – based on surviving all kind of threats – has made us react faster to negative stimuli. The neuroscientists Rick Hanson and John Cacioppo demonstrated that brain activity is a lot higher during negative experiences than during positive ones. Here is an interesting article on “the negativity bias”: https://miuc.org/brain-love-negativity-negativity-bias/

In the book “Unstressable”, Mo Gawdat and Alice Law explain in a very enjoyable way how our brain keeps talking to us, how we often live in an endless cycle of stressful thoughts: “I should…”, “what if…”, “I should have…” combined with Flashbacks and Flashforwards. I love their advice to change the game by understanding the following: You are not your thoughts. Remember: Your brain is constantly trying to protect you from danger. And yes: You can change the kind of thoughts you have by questioning them – it’s what they call the three anchors of sanity (p. 142, Unstressable), when a negative thought comes in:

• Is it true?
• What can I do to fix it?
• Can I accept it and do something to make life better despite its presence?

If you have read about all of these things before and are still struggling to have a positive self-talk with yourself, here is my personal advice and what has truly helped me (and I’m still learning this day by day as well):

• Start changing the words and phrases you use, step by step. Instead of always saying “I have to”… –> say “I want to…” or “It will help me to…” or “I will…” and try to use more positive words. I know it’s not easy in the beginning, go step by step:
  Example 1: “I have to finish this annoying task today.” –> “I will finish this task today because it helps my company/team/family/home/…, even though it might not be the task I enjoy the most.”
  Example 2: “I can’t do this.” –> “I will try my best – with the resources and knowledge I have right now – to do this.”
  
  
• Spend some time in front of the mirror, look yourself in the eye and give yourself a compliment about something you really like about yourself. One thing. Your smile or energy. A part of your personality or character. A body feature. Look yourself in the eye and tell yourself something nice. Say it every day. And once you have it internalised, maybe after a few days or weeks, find a new feature you like about yourself. Discover yourself. Be kind to yourself. Start expressing more and more love towards yourself. It sounds so weird but it helps so much. We are often so kind to others and often so nasty to ourselves. I know sooo many people who struggle with this and I have struggled myself with this a lot. I have shared this exercise with different people, and even practiced it with the ones in my closer circle, and it has always brought some beautiful results. Please try it at least.
  
  
• Visualize your life full of ease and love & convince yourself that every difficulty is a chance to learn, to grow. What would your life look like, if you changed the narrative from “This is so hard…”, “I should have…”, to “I have done my best and I’m learning…”. You are where you are today because of your experiences, learnings, because of the mistakes you made (although I don’t like the word “mistakes” so much. I’ve convinced myself that every mistake is an important learning and a door we close so that a new one can open). And I know sometimes there are sooo many learnings we have to make. I have different areas in my life too where I feel that I’ve learnt a lot already and still, life seems to challenge me, it keeps offering opportunities to confirm whether I have really learnt this or I need to go through it again. It’s exhausting sometimes, yes it is. But while I struggle with some topics, I try to connect to this feeling of ease and love. And by the way: in this sense, love has nothing to do with our relationships. The love you are searching is within you. It is you. (Vex King) We can all learn to find this feeling of ease and love within, step by step, by changing our narrative. I’m personally learning to connect to this feeling by expressing even more honestly what is in my head and heart in this moment.
  
  Besides these 3 tips, I always recommend the “classic mindful practices” such as journaling (Write down your thoughts to express them, process them and get them out of your system), practicing gratitude (What or who are you grateful for right now?) and focusing on the here and now (What do you smell? What do you see? What do you hear?…). You find many articles in my library on all these topics.
  To sum up, I truly hope that my lines inspire you – at least to think and become aware about the conversation you have with yourself.
  Awareness is the first step. Awareness leads to transformation. The good news?
  It’s within you to cultivate a kinder, more compassionate self-talk. You can. And you will. Believe in yourself.