Home Educator’s Family Times - Self Talk - To A Healthier you

Self-Talk - To A Healthier You

Jane Boswell

We speak to ourselves at the rate of 1300 words per minute. What are we ‘saying’
to ourselves and why is it important?

An article I was reading in a psychology manual fascinated me. It said that people can speak out loud at a rate of about 150 to 200 words per minute, but inwardly we carry on a thought dialogue with ourselves at a rate of about 1,300 words per minute. Well, I knew I talked to myself – but didn’t realize I could go that fast!

The people that research these kinds of things call this self-talk. The article went on to say, however, that most of our self-talk – unconscious and undirected – tends to be negative and self-defeating. Looking at my own thought patterns, that part didn’t surprise me. As humans we have a problem keeping our thoughts headed in a positive direction. They seem to work with gravity – trying to pull our attitudes ever downward. Researchers have determined that negative self-talk is usually based on automatic, illogical and painful assumptions. It is real – but not usually realistic or true. People build up assumptions about themselves and life and the unconscious self-talk overemphasizes painful events and places too much attention on what other people think and say about us (or worse yet - what we think they think and say).

This, in turn influences the way we respond to the circumstances and personal relationships in our lives.

Our own thoughts and self-talk can cause anxiety and stress – and heaven knows we don’t need any more of that! We’re far too busy for any more stress!

Now, I know we can all relate to this. And since this seems to be a normal part of the human condition, it’s very important that we learn to deal with it. I started working on my thought-life about 17 years ago. I certainly have not finished the process – and the older I get gravity and my thoughts pull harder – and the results show not just on my drooping frame but also on those sagging thoughts.

Years ago I began to realize that some of my feelings and thoughts were not necessarily true. Oh, they were very real – painfully real – but not based on truth. Here’s the truth: God loves me unconditionally and wants me to see myself the way He sees me. As a busy (and harried) wife and homeschool mother I set out on a mind-renewal adventure which started first thing in the morning. I had to MAKE myself do this and MAKE myself get up a little earlier each morning to have the time I needed. The most important part of this special time (and it started with only 5 minutes) was to say the things to myself that God says about me (and you, by the way). This little exercise had nothing to do with whether I felt that way or not - whether I believed those thoughts or not. If God said and thought good things about me and HE believed that in Him I am His unique creation – what right did I have to contradict Him? Working with Him was key. So, I started saying things like the following (out loud).

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely. You hem me in – behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Psalm 139

When you learn the habit of positive self-talk – a simple act of consciously renewing your mind – it will change your life – little by little. It will form a positive, confident foundation for your life and revolutionize your faith and belief system. It won’t change your surroundings, spouse, your children, Uncle Charlie or that nosy neighbor but it will change the way you respond to your surroundings, people and circumstances of life. As Jesus suggested, take one day at a time - sometimes one hour or one minute at a time and concentrate on forming this habit.

Here are some good thoughts to start with – God’s affirming truth about you – to begin the conscious, disciplined effort of feeding your mind – it will just take a few minutes a day – but like any skill building exercise, it must be continued to be successful. Remember, this is speaking the TRUTH.

I am loved with an everlasting love. (Jeremiah 31:3)

I am a new creation in Christ. Old things have passed away - I have become new. (2 Cor. 5:17)

I have peace, I have joy, I have received an abundance of grace and I reign in life. (Romans 5)

Nothing can separate me from God’s love and His love is in my heart. (Romans 8: 38-39)

I walk in love - abounding in (God’s) love towards everyone. (Ephesians 5; I Thessalonians 3)

I do not fret or have anxiety about anything. I give my cares and worries to God who cares for me… (I Peter 5: 6-7)

I have abundant life. (John 10:10)

I am free of shame and condemnation. (Romans 8:1)

I am being changed and conformed to the image of Christ. (Romans 8:28-29; Phil. 1:6)

I am holy and without blame before God (Ephesians 1:4)

I am forgiven; all my sins are washed away. (Ephesians 1:7)

I am God’s worksmanship. (Ephesians 2:10)

I can do all things through Christ. (Philippians 4:13)

I am victorious. (Revelation 21:7)

I am a capable, intelligent and virtuous woman, far more precious than jewels ; The heart of my husband trusts in me confidently and relies on and believes in me safely and

I comfort and encourage and do him only good as long as there is life in me..(Proverbs 31: 10, 11, 12)

o Some other self-talk phrases – to replace those nagging negatives as soon as you are aware of them:

I keep score of the good things in my life.

I choose to forgive and move on with my life.

I’m getting the job done, one task at a time.

I am moving toward my goals.

I face up to my feelings.

I can reach the top.

I enjoy taking good care of myself.

My spouse is my best friend.

I am a lovable person.

I can enjoy healthy relationships.

God gives me strength to enact my new decisions.

Dr. Chris Thurman (Minirth Meier New Life Clinics) says:

“Your brain can both record and play back, and it has access to a personal library of thousands of tapes ready to play at a moment’s notice. These are tapes which hold all the beliefs, attitudes, and expectations that you have ‘recorded’ during your life.

Some of the tapes inside your brain are truthful, such as “You can’t please everybody all the time” or “Life’s rough.”

Some of these tapes are lies, such as “I’m only as good as what I do” or “Life should be fair” or “Things have to go my way for me to be happy.”

Many lie tapes play in your mind without you even knowing it. They play unconsciously when life presses the play button. Unconscious or not, these tapes dramatically affect your feelings and actions each day. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to these tapes. Unless they are made conscious, you are at their mercy.

Your emotional life hangs in the balance. It directly reflects whether your mind is dominated by lies or truth. If your mind has more lies than truth playing through it, you’ll tend to be more emotionally unhappy and troubled. If, on the other hand, your mind has more truth than lies taped and running, you’ll feel more well-being than misery.

The primary challenge, then, is not to attempt changing the circumstances surrounding us, although there is nothing wrong with improving them when we can. The primary challenge is to make our mental tapes as truthful as we can so that we will be able to handle successfully whatever circumstances come our way.” ( Reference: The Complete Life Encyclopedia, copyright 1995, Thomas Nelson, Inc., pp 503)

Start today, pass it on.

If you have any comments, contact me online at our internet site: http://www.homeeducator.com/HSN - Homeschool Support Network - an online homeschool support organization. Email me: famtimes@blazenetme.net

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Home Educator’s Family Times - Self Talk - To A Healthier you

Dr. Chris Thurman (Minirth Meier New Life Clinics) says:

“Your brain can both record and play back, and it has access to a personal library of thousands of tapes ready to play at a moment’s notice. These are tapes which hold all the beliefs, attitudes, and expectations that you have ‘recorded’ during your life.

Some of the tapes inside your brain are truthful, such as “You can’t please everybody all the time” or “Life’s rough.”

Some of these tapes are lies, such as “I’m only as good as what I do” or “Life should be fair” or “Things have to go my way for me to be happy.”

Many lie tapes play in your mind without you even knowing it. They play unconsciously when life presses the play button. Unconscious or not, these tapes dramatically affect your feelings and actions each day. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to these tapes. Unless they are made conscious, you are at their mercy.

Your emotional life hangs in the balance. It directly reflects whether your mind is dominated by lies or truth. If your mind has more lies than truth playing through it, you’ll tend to be more emotionally unhappy and troubled. If, on the other hand, your mind has more truth than lies taped and running, you’ll feel more well-being than misery.

The primary challenge, then, is not to attempt changing the circumstances surrounding us, although there is nothing wrong with improving them when we can. The primary challenge is to make our mental tapes as truthful as we can so that we will be able to handle successfully whatever circumstances come our way.”

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eHarmony - Feature - self_esteem
Building Your Self Esteem From Scratch

By Dr. Neil Clark Warren
eHarmony.com Founder

People whose self-esteem is low have emotional health that is likely to be poor. If you don’t think very highly of yourself, you become a sitting duck for any neurosis. A neurosis is a way of relating to life. When we come under the threat of anxiety, in an effort to manage the anxiety in our lives, we use defense mechanisms that, in themselves, become ongoing problems for us.

For instance, the Wall Street Journal says that we have an epidemic of depression in the United States. Depression is the result of our having used a defense mechanism, usually repression, to try to get rid of our anxiety. In getting rid of our anxiety we get rid of all our feelings, and so we find ourselves sitting on the side of a bed with one shoe off, but we just don’t have the energy to remove the other shoe.

Now, why are we in that condition? We’re in that condition because we feel so inadequate at the center of ourselves. Life is posing challenges and problems that we don’t know how to handle, so in our effort to try to get rid of those challenges and problems we use repression. In using the repression we get rid of all of our feelings. When we get rid of our feelings, we end up with little energy and without an ability to function properly in the world.

It all begins with an inadequate self-conception. It all starts with low self esteem. Without a foundation of unshakable self value you’ll never be able to confront life’s frustrations and challenges without turning on yourself. If you have low self-esteem, it’s vital that you go to work to get it raised.

Positive self-esteem needs to be deep-rooted before you engage in any serious dating relationship. The same is true for anyone you date. When I talk to two people who are becoming serious about each other, one of the first things I look for in both of them is whether they feel good about themselves. Your self-esteem needs to be at a good level before you begin a relationship that has the possibility of lasting for a lifetime.

Two things you can do to improve your self-esteem

Let’s assume that your self-esteem or that of your partner is just not what it needs to be right now. There are two core activities that begin to establish better self-esteem. The first thing I want to suggest to you is the importance of tuning in to your Self-Talk.

Can you imagine having an internal recorder that could actually replay what you say when no one else is listening? What if you could replay the conversations you have had with yourself over the last several hours? What kinds of phrases would you hear?

The fact is, most of the time we have little conscious awareness of our own internal dialogue, and yet this self-talk has a huge impact on how you feel about yourself. With a little practice, you can tune into this information and use it to bolster your self-image.

If your self talk is highly negative, it is virtually guaranteed that your self-esteem will be weak. In fact, it has been my experience that people cannot have a profound sense of their own significance until they develop self-talk that promotes their value as a person.

Once you’ve become more aware of your self-talk, you’ll be able to moderate your inner conversation. You’ll be able to take a kinder tone and recognize your intrinsic value.

The second thing I want you to do is to become a chooser and a decider. I know no one who has adequate self-esteem who isn’t what I call a chooser and a decider. I want you to allow yourself to be the captain of your own ship.

I believe that at the center of your brain there is something like a control booth. It reminds me of the NBC booth at the Republican National Convention. It’s round and in my head it has glass all around it. At the center of this booth are a lot of telephones and computers. Your task is to get yourself at the center of your own control booth, and, once you are there, you need to do two things.

The first is to get all the information into your booth you can about whatever it is you’re trying to make a decision on. Get data from all your thoughts and feelings. Then find out what the people important to you recommend and what the common wisdom is about this choice.

Then the second thing that you do is to stand in the middle of all that information and YOU make the decision. You decide for yourself. You don’t let other people tell you who you will be in a given moment or what you will decide. When you do that, you become a choosing, deciding person. No individual can be a real person unless they are a chooser and decider. If you give up control over your booth to someone else, like a mother or a father, someone you’re dating, or a peer group, you give up your personhood. When you give up your personhood, I promise you, you won’t feel very good about yourself.

But when you take your control booth back and you take over again being a chooser and a decider, you will feel really good about yourself and take an important step in the direction of self determination. It is the basis of the self esteem a successful life requires.

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Taking It To Heart - How Small Self-Talk Can Create Big Self-Love
Taking It To Heart - How Small Self-Talk Can Create Big Self-Love
By Alexandra Watson

Article Word Count: 671 [View Summary] Comments (0)

As women we talk… a lot. Not only do we like to talk to friends and loved ones, we also spend quite a bit of time talking to ourselves. The truth is talking to yourself is not a sign of madness as some would have you believe, but something we do naturally and constantly. Its this small self talk that counts because if we do talk to ourselves a lot, then it is essential to ensure that what we say is kind, patient, understanding and supportive, otherwise we have an inbuilt critique and an overly-harsh one at that!

Can you imagine if you had someone following you about all day criticizing every single thing that you did? It would literally drive you crazy! Yet this is what we do to ourselves and more often than not we don’t even know we are doing it. Subconsciously or not these words still affect our feelings of self-confidence and self-love. Why? Because we are being disapproving of ourselves. We are rejecting our own abilities and if we do that others are sure to follow.

Judging, criticizing or disapproving is our way of trying to ensure we raise our standards and do better or achieve more. We want to act more professionally or more intelligently. Although it is understandable that we want to be the best we can, but is it really acceptable to talk to ourselves that way? Surely being the best you can involves happiness, joy, laughter and inner-peace? These can only be achieved if…guess what?…Yep that’s right!…We love ourselves!

Imagine that you have just been to a very important meeting. For some reason you didn’t feel that you were at your best, you know, you weren’t firing on all cylinders. You come out of the meeting, very upset and go to the restroom for privacy and to pace up and down calling yourself an idiot, saying things like, ‘why didn’t I say this?’ Or ‘what is wrong with me?’ Now you have created a situation that can only get worse. If you ask yourself these types of questions you are only going to get negative answers like, ‘because you didn’t prepare thoroughly,’ or ‘you did it again! I knew you would fold!’ How can you possibly come up with better ideas, solutions, or performance levels if you beat yourself up so badly?

As a kid I am sure you remember that when you were applauded, understood or supported by a friend or your family it made you feel great, no matter how badly you thought you did. It is the same today. If you support, applaud and understand your performance everyday no matter what, then you will not only feel better about yourself, your level of competence will increase too.

Being more compassionate with yourself will help nurture your growth and development not only professionally, but personally too. Again this will reap massive rewards for you and your loved ones as it is a great lesson to show your children. Teach them how to communicate with themselves positively in this highly-competitive world.

Each day begin to notice what you are saying to yourself and as you do check that it is positive. If it isn’t then you need to reword it immediately. Be compassionate, be understanding and patient. It’s ok to have a bad day or even a bad week and if you can develop a habit of positive small talk everyday situations become lighter, more fun and less daunting or stressful.

Alexandra Watson has helped countless women create happy and fulfilling lives through her happiness system. She has developed a fool-proof, easy-to-follow seven step system to happiness that any woman can use and see results fast. John Gray, author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus calls Alexandra’s book The Happiness System for Women ‘a vibrant and exciting journey to the centre of your soul’. Alexandra has featured internationally on TV, radio and in many publications. She can be contacted by email on: HappinessAuthor@aol.com or visit her website at http://www.AlexandraWatson.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

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BYUCougars.com - Self-Talk
Self-Talk

Self-talk is the quiet, and in some cases not so quiet, conversations that you have with yourself prior to, during, and after your performances. Self-statements like “way to go,” “you can do it,”or “you’re an idiot” are examples of self-talk during performances. What you tell yourself directly effects how you feel and perform. Positive self-talk enhances a your confidence and improves your ability to perform well. Negative self-talk often leads to feelings like doubt, fear, or anxiety which limit your ability to perform up to your true potential. By improving your self-talk, you can stay more focused during practice and competition, motivate yourself to perform better, and experience greater success.

I like to use the following analogy when I teach this skill. Pretend you are teaching a child how to shoot a basketball. You would demonstrate how, explain the important aspects of this skill, and then encourage her to do her best. If she made the shot, you would reinforce what she did well and give genuine praise. “Way to go Jennie, I liked your follow-through!” If she missed, you would encourage her and give her some brief instructional feedback. “Its okay, bend your knees and focus on your target.” This type of teaching comes natural when we keep the right perspective. However, many performers lose the proper perspective when they critique their own performance. When they do well they seldom praise themselves or minimize their success. They just expect to do well all of the time. “Finally, why couldn’t have I started playing better earlier in the game?” Nevertheless, performers tend to be very critical of themselves and their abilities when they do not perform well. They are impatient, negative, and engage in self-talk that lowers their confidence and their belief that they can succeed. “You can’t do anything right, you don’t belong at this level of competition.” Imagine talking to a young performer like you talk to yourself. In many cases, you would take the fun out of performing and ruin the youngsters confidence. The obvious conclusion is to use self-talk that teaches, inspires, motivates, and enables you to believe in yourself and have fun. You can be your greatest fan or your worst enemy. You decide, the choice is yours!

Awareness is often the first step to change. You can only change your self-talk when you can identify what it is that you are saying to yourself. Next time you perform, be aware of your internal dialogue with yourself. After the performance, journal how well you performed, your level of confidence, and what you said to yourself that impacted your performance in a positive or negative way. Think of past performances and try to remember your self-talk. Watch yourself on videotape to help recall your emotions and thinking. Have your coach or teammates help you monitor your verbalizations during practice or competition. These are all ways to monitor what you say to yourself.

To change your self-talk you simply need to stop your negative verbalizations and thinking as soon as you notice it happening. Say “stop!,” use a cue word or phrase to help you refocus such as, “be positive,” clear your mind by taking a couple of deep breaths, or replace your negative self-statement, “its over, give up” with its positive counterpart “keep fighting, you can do it.” The main point is to stop the negativity, be positive, and perform with a clear mind. Changing your self-talk requires desire on your part to use more positive self-talk, an awareness of your self-statements, and persistent practice and effort.

Self-Talk Exercise

Directions: Complete this written exercise shortly after a practice or competition. Your assignment is to identify important events that occurred prior to or during your performance, your self-talk about those situations, and the emotional and performance consequences. You will then identify new ways of thinking in the future under similar circumstances and speculate about how the new thinking will lead to better results. I will give you an example to follow.

What happened during my performance?
I missed an important free-throw late in the game.

What did I tell myself about the situation?
“You’re a choker, you blew your opportunity to win the game in regulation.”

What effect did it have on my emotions and performance?
My shooting confidence, especially from the free throw line, suffered during the overtime period. I passed up open shots even when I had good looks at the baskets and missed 3 out 4 free-throws during overtime. My muscles were tense and I was thinking too much instead of just relaxing and playing the game. The game wasn’t fun, it was stressful.

What could I do or say differently in the future under similar circumstances?
I could say, “hey, everyone misses a free-throw from time to time.” “I’ll make the next one.” “Just relax and enjoy the game.” “Trust in your ability to shoot the ball well, you are a good shooter.” “I love the pressure situation and will make the other team pay for fouling me.”

How might that improve my emotional state and performance?
I would probably play more relaxed and my confidence would not fluctuate based upon my makes. I would also enjoy the game more.

For assistance in identifying ways to improve your self-talk contact:
Ron Chamberlain, Ph.D.
6-SFH
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
Ron_Chamberlain@byu.edu
(801) 422-8018

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