How to Practice Positive Self-Talk

The human brain is the most powerful biochemical computer known to mankind. It is shaped by thought, speech, and behavior. Do you do everything you can to feed it positivity, or do you frequently notice yourself getting caught up in negative thought patterns?

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What Is Self-Talk

Self-talk is your internal dialogue, or your inner voice. You may not always be aware that you're talking to yourself, but you do so almost every minute of every day. The inner voice is a combination of your conscious and subconscious thought, your beliefs and biases, and cultural programming.

Most of us have been negatively programmed unintentionally over the course of our lives. Studies show the average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day of which 80% are negative and 95% are the same as the day before.

Self-talk is important because it has a significant impact on your emotional state and behaviors. It can be supportive and beneficial by motivating you, or it can undermine your confidence with negativity.

Negative Self-Talk and Mental Health

Those who find themselves frequently engaging in negative self-talk tend to be more stressed. This is in large part due to the fact that their reality is altered to create an experience where they don't have the ability to reach the goals they've set for themselves.

Negative self-talk happens when your inner voice becomes excessively negative and critical. It brings out the bad in every situation in daily life and it erodes your confidence by stopping you from reaching your potential.

Negative self-talk can be incessantly repetitive and usually does not reflect reality. Research shows when left unchecked, it can affect your mental health such as depression and your relationships with partners, friends, family, and coworkers.

My Story

I have struggled with my internal dialogue most of my life. I previously wrote about how I've had very few people in my life who acknowledged my pain and made me feel heard. This lack of support caused me to develop an internal dialogue that told me I am not good enough and that I am unwanted by others.

I remember having a massive panic attack a few years ago as I was laying in my bed in Denver. I had difficulty breathing and felt my heart beating out of my chest. I had just flown back in after an exhausting series of interviews in San Fransisco and all I could think about was wether I had done and said the right things.

At some point during that night, I realized that it was the internal dialogue in my head creating all of the awful physical sensations in my body. It was in that moment I decided that any time negative thoughts surfaced, I would rephrase them and use that positive energy to change my behaviors.

It took a great deal of effort, but any time a thought such as "I am not good enough" surfaces now, I have the awareness to intercept it before it is given a chance to expand and I developed the habits to make productive use of that thought.

For example, whenever I feel unwanted I may reach out to a friend for a hike or dinner, and whenever I feel "not good enough" I will journal about what's causing me to feel this way and discover something new about myself.

Levels of Self-Talk

Self-talk is a way to override your negative programming from the past by replacing it with conscious and positive instructions. It is a practical way to live your life by active intent rather than by passive acceptance.

There are several levels of self-talk, each of us move through these levels on a daily basis. Some of them work for us, and others work against us. The more awareness you create around which one is prevalent in your life, the more power you will have to change it.

Negative acceptance ("I can't" or "if only I could") is the most harmful kind of self-talk. This type of dialogue makes you hesitate, question your abilities, and accept less than you know you're capable of. This type of thinking shuts down any kind of creative thinking because it implies doing so is pointless.

Recognition and frustration ("I need to" or "I should") helps you recognize a problem but creates frustration by not providing a solution. It creates guilt, disappointment, and an acceptance of your own self-imagined inadequacies.

Decision to change ("I never" or "I no longer") is the first level that works for you instead of against you. Here, you recognize the need to change but also make the decision to do something about it in the present as though the change has already taken place.

A better you characterized by "I am" statements is the most effective type of self-talk you can use. This level helps you communicate to your brain "this is the me I want you to create, forget the old programming I gave you, and replace it with the new". This self-talk inspires and encourages you to face your fears and take action.

Methods of Self-Talk

The methods that make self-talk work for you are simple and easy to use but require daily practice. You will feel drawn more to some than others and it is important you try different ones to see which ones make a difference for you.

Silent self-talk is either conscious or unconscious internal dialogue that incudes everything you think about yourself and your surroundings. It gives you the opportunity to reframe your thoughts in a positive light, thereby changing your programming.

For example, you may rephrase the thought "work is frustrating me so I obviously don't know what I'm doing" into "I am frustrated because I am operating at the limits of my comfort zone, but this is where I grow and become more confident".

Spoken self-talk includes anything you say out loud to yourself or anyone else. What you say directly influences the directions you give your subconscious mind, so make sure that what you say paints the picture you want to communicate.

Written self-talk is the type of self-talk you write out, word for word. Doing so focuses your attention and gets you actively involved in the process of erasing old, negative programming and replacing it with new positive thoughts.

How to Put It All Together

Now that we've talked about what self-talk is, how it affects mental health, the different types or levels of self-talk, and the methods by which your thoughts are communicated, let's see how we can put all of this together in order to create more positivity, and thus happiness in our lives.

Increase your awareness by listening to your own thoughts and how you respond to problems over the next few days. Your goal here is to create awareness around how you talk to yourself instead of blindly accepting thought as truth.

Create a list of the top ten negative self-talk programs you would like to change. Use the awareness you started to create in the previous step by asking yourself which thoughts and beliefs cause you the most distress and categorizing them by their respective level.

For example, you may have caught yourself thinking "I should lose weight because I don't like the way I look in the mirror". After writing this thought down, you may also note that this thought falls under the "recognization and frustration" level. You recognize a problem, but instead of taking positive action, you feel frustrated due to a lack of solutions.

Reframe negative thoughts by acknowledging the problem but including some sort of positive change. The idea here is to move from the harmful levels of self-talk, such as negative acceptance, to a more helpful level such as by using "I am" statements.

Continuing the weight loss example, try to reframe the thought into something that will help you take action with positive intent. You may rewrite "I should lose weight because I don't like the way I look in the mirror" into something like "I am committed to daily exercise and proper nutrition so that I can live up to my full potential".

Integrate the new self-talk you created into your daily life by using the silent, spoken, and written self-talk methods.

For example, you may decide to leverage silent self-talk by reframing your thoughts each time you look in the mirror, and written self-talk by creating a diet and workout plan which will motivate you.

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