The Power of Self-Talk
Do you ever catch yourself talking to yourself . . . out loud? Now don’t be embarrassed. It has been said that the smartest people in the world talk to themselves out loud. I actually try to talk to myself consciously, because talking positively to oneself can have huge benefits. The words in your mind will often sound different when they’re spoken out through your mouth and received back through your ears. It’s a wonderful way to flesh out your thoughts.
We’re all talking to ourselves, regardless of whether we’re paying attention to what we’re saying or not. When you say, “I’m hungry,” you’re talking to yourself as much as when you say, “I can’t afford it.” You should take the time to try to notice your self-talk. It’ll be quite enlightening.
Self-Talk Shapes Your Reality
Your self-talk affects the way that you think, talk, and act. It can change your reality.
There are two people that I have learned this from more than anyone else. One person had a knee problem for some 35 years. Every time I saw her she would have a solution, whether it was a medication or a TENS unit to help her fix the pain in her knees.
After going from doctor to doctor for years without much result, her husband decided to take her to Mayo Clinic to figure out what was wrong. After two weeks of testing in many departments of Mayo, the diagnosis came forward: there is nothing wrong with your knees. The prescription was to take half of the medications away and walk between a quarter mile and two miles a day. Her health immediately began to change for the better. In the diagnosis, the doctors said that they believed that her knees did hurt. After years of thinking there was something wrong with her knees, the pain became real.
The second person had a habit of saying, “I am tired,” every day. Many times, this would be directly after at least 8 hours of sleep. She was constantly saying, “I am tired, I am tired, I am tired, I am tired.” She said she was tired for years, and came to believe that she really was, but she didn’t need any more sleep or rest. I discussed self-talk with her recently, and she realized that she had been self-talking the entire time.
Think about what would have happened if these people had been telling themselves, “I feel great! I am ready to take on whatever life gives me today.” My guess is that they would have shaped a much different reality for themselves. All that time spent thinking about how terrible they feel could have been transferred to what they wanted to accomplish or whom they wanted to spend time with.
Find Out What You’ve Been Saying to Yourself
What you are habitually talking about to yourself every day is the main reason that you are where you are in life. So many times, this conversation that we’re having with ourselves is completely subconscious. We really have to dig deep to find out what we’ve been saying to ourselves. Much of our self-talk comes from the self-talk that our parents had. These phrases are literally small habits that have been passed down from generation to generation.
The process of finding out how your self-talk is shaping your life is twofold. Start to pay attention to what you are saying to yourself regularly. Then pay attention to what is going on in your life. What irritates you? How do you annoy yourself? What do you love about your life? Are the answers to any of those questions being influenced by what you are saying to yourself subconsciously or aloud?
Once you start to make connections between self-talk and the reality of your life, you will be able to make conscious changes to your self-talk, and your life will change because of what you are saying to yourself. We all talk to ourselves . . . So it is best to choose what to say!
