Stop The Negative Self Talk Your Amazing

 Be nice to yourself. It’s hard to be happy when someone is mean to you all the time – Christine Arylo

According to the National Science Foundation people have up to 50,000 thoughts per day. Holy crap how do we function at all? Our brains are always on. Some thoughts are random and ever changing but some are persistent and relentless.

The good news is we do have some control over our thoughts. The thoughts we consistently have shape our reality.

I hear people complaining all the time about how they have no control over their lives, hell I used to do it it all the time. I do realize that sometimes things can be out of your control but that’s no excuse to just except where you are in life.

Negative self talk feeds on itself. It becomes habit. It gets to the point where it’s almost comforting, a reason to give up or not go for it at all.

If a stranger started calling you stupid or useless or a failure I’m guessing you’d get pissed, how dare they? So how can we stop the name calling that goes on in our own heads? It starts by creating new habits. A lot of the time our minds are on auto pilot so let’s put the controls back in manual mode.

5 Tips to Interrupt Your Negative Thinking

•Awareness or Mindfulness-Basically pay attention. Thoughts constantly move in and out of our minds. In the beginning paying attention is a lot of work but once you get in the habit you’ll become more aware of your thoughts.

•Stop over thinking-When you catch yourself having a negative thought recognize it and move on to the next step. Don’t obsess about the negative.

•Re-frame-Step back from the thought and consider the frame or lens you’re looking through and change some aspect of the thought. Ex. “I’ll never reach my goal” becomes “If add ______ to my routine I’ll reach my goal” 

•Dispute the Absolute-What the hell does that mean? Things are very seldom all or nothing. Always, constantly, never are mostly illusions. You don’t “always screw up”. You can’t “never do things right”. 

•Separate the negative thoughts from yourself-And what the hell does that mean? If you talk to yourself a lot (yea, I always do and mostly out loud too) you’ll understand it’s like having a conversation with another person, unless I’m just nuts.

Look at the thought as if some stranger were saying it to you. Get mad, defend yourself! Give your negative side a name of it’s own. Call it by name and put it in it’s place.

The way you think is influenced by many circumstances from your parents and peers, from what you read and watch on television. The most powerful influences are your conscience and sub conscience. Only you have control over what they feed on.

Don’t constantly feed them junkfood. Work on your mindset constantly and consistently. You’re exposed to crap all the time so be sure to counter the negatives with positives.

P.S. Did I miss anything? What do you do to keep your negative Nancy in line?