CHANGING DIRECTIONS THROUGH SELF-TALK

Changing Directions
Through Self-talk!

Self-talk has been around for a lot of years: it’s recognition of what we say to ourselves. Many of the mind-gurus claim 80% of what the average person says is undermining, blocking and self-destructive. It’s all part of the conditioned mind–the result of your life up to the present. If you feel blocked, inhibited, and feel that it’s the way you think, or the things you say, YOU have the power to change this . The Subconscious Mind, your internal biological computer, learns through repetition, which is why advertisers bombard us with commercials over and over again.

You can change the way you think by changing your own self-talk, simply by resolving to do it. Talk to yourself whenever you have the opportunity, whenever you are alone. Do this powerful exercise.

MY FIVE DESIRES

Each month, select five of the most important affirmations or self-talk that you want or desire to apply in your life. (Desire is the energyyou use to get things done.) Write or print the five affirmations on a card. Keep them handy…somewhere where you will see them several times a day. Do not say them in a monitone, or sound as if you are bored. Whenever you have the opportunity, repeat them aloud with gusto and desire–as if your life depended on it. Incidentally, never, never show your affirmations card to anyone else–even that special person in your life. Other people may not see the affirmations the way you do, and a simple question such as: “Why do you need to do that?” will start the de-energizing process.

Incidentally, your list of five can also be repeated while you are in your sanctuary, as suggested in my article of “Do it yourself: Relaxation.” Repeating affirmations when relaxed, has greater effect.

Here are some examples of self-talk affirmations. If you need more, create them yourself. This will get you started. Good luck, and remember: Think well – be well.

I am positive, confident and radiate good things.
I have boundless energy, enthusiasm and vitality.
I attract prosperity by associating with prosperous people.
I enjoy calling on people–and people enjoy my calling on them.
The more quality calls I make–the more income dollars I earn.
I am totally relaxed and confident. When I am relaxed I achieve more.
I realize that time is my most valuable resource, so I carefully use it on result-producing activities.
I am a professional, respected person, fully capable of earning a professional, respected income.
I attract success into my life. I deserve everything that success brings.
I really am very special. I like who I am and I feel good about myself.
I was designed and created, in body and mind, to achieve.
I am a person of quality and strength. My success is the result of who I am and how I think.
I always look for ways I can get something done instead of finding reasons why I cannot.
I always listen to clients and work to understand their needs.
I enjoy showing others the best of themselves. I always accept them at their best.
I have strength, absolute determination, and limitless endurance in the pursuit of my goals.
Every day in every way, I feel better and better.
I am calm and confident. I have the quiet self-assurance of winning in my life.
I have inner peace. I am living my life in a positive and worthwhile way.
I have purpose and value in my life. I love who I am and I enjoy being me.
I love and accept myself completely as I am.
I am in control of my emotions. I never get needlessly upset or overreact to any situation at any time.
I really am very special. I like who I am and I feel good about myself.
I am intelligent. My mind is quick and alert and clever and fun.
I think good thoughts, and my mind makes things work right for me.
I am able to see a precise picture of exactly what my goals are in everything I do–and what I must do to achieve each of them.
Because winning takes energy, good health, and a strong, positive attitude, I make sure that I keep myself fit–both mentally and physically.
I take full responsibility for everything about me, even the thoughts I think.
I always visualize my self being at my absolute best in every part of my professional life.
I learn from everything I do and everyone I meet.
My mind is clear and alert. It is capable of meeting any challenge I place before it.
I have excellent powers of concentration. I attune all my senses to the subject at hand, and I am able to focus my attention more and more easily each day.
I am creative. I like to find new and interesting ways to think and do things in my life.
Every day, something new and interesting happens in my life.
I am happy because I am living my life in worthwhile ways.
I like myself and I like my goals. I am moving forward in my life.

ROADMAP TO THE FUTURE

A point to remember: Your goals are your roadmap to the future. Affirmations or self-talk fuel the desire to achieve those goals. A person without goals is like a ship, all fueled and loaded, with no propeller, no rudder and no destination. One further thing: write down your goals. They take on a diffeerent dimension when they’re written down.

Robert D. Egby
Center for Hypnosis Healing and Meditation

OBGYN.net – How to Talk to Yourself When Nobody is Listening and You Want to

How to Talk to Yourself When Nobody is Listening and You Want to
by Peter Murphy

Do you ever pay attention to the thoughts inside your mind? And more importantly do you ever notice the way in which you talk to yourself? We all pay a lot of attention to the way we communicate with the outside world but we often neglect to improve the way we communicate with ourselves. When it comes to motivating yourself to be a better person, to do better at work or to create a happier family life you need to understand the importance of taking control of your self talk.

Here are three tips you can use right away to motivate yourself:

1. Talk to yourself the way you talk to someone you love

Be honest! Is it true you sometimes insult yourself, curse yourself and say horrible things about your abilities? If you spoke like this regularly to someone you care about they would leave and never talk to you again. There is no excuse for treating yourself so badly. Talk to yourself the way you would talk to someone you deeply love. Be respectful, patient and understanding. Be slow to anger, quick to praise and grateful for the opportunity to listen.

Be on your best behavior when you talk to yourself and you will find that you treat other people better as well. This in turn will cause people to respond more positively to whatever you say. These very people will be more inclined to help you get what you want. In an indirect way your communication with the outside world will improve.

2. Pump up the volume

Very often we go through our day with an internal dialogue buzzing away in the background. We mutter to ourselves about what we need to do without feeling particularly inspired to do anything other than what we have to do. This is not an effective strategy for self motivation! What you need to do instead is to turn up the volume, inject some passion into your words and talk to yourself with enthusiasm. You would not have much luck motivating someone else to take action without putting some energy into your words. You need to do the same to motivate yourself.

The next time you want to motivate yourself to do something talk to yourself the same way you would if someone was standing before you waiting to be inspired. Speak loudly with passion and excitement either aloud or to yourself inside your head. The more energy you put into it, the easier it will be to light the fire inside you that sparks you into action.

3. Know how to feel good when you are having a tough day

No matter how focused, positive and hard working you are there will still be days when nothing seems to go your way. It is on days like this that you must take charge of your brain and take control of your self talk.

You need a back catalogue of memories you can replay to make yourself feel good. Music does it for me. I have so many songs I love to hear that I just pick one out and listen to it in my mind. In a moment I can listen to sounds that make me feel fantastic simply by choosing to. For best results imagine you have a volume control with bass and treble. Make the music sound rich, loud and resonant. A friend of mine has such a great memory that he will listen to an entire CD in his mind. How about that for a quick and easy way to feel good whenever you are having a tough day?

One final way to use this tip. Replay happy memories of people telling you how much they value and appreciate you. Hear them saying what a difference you are making and soak up those wonderful feelings of appreciation.

It really is your choice as to how you run your brain. Choose to feel great and your communication with yourself and the outside world will become remarkable. Your motivation will soar and getting more done each day will just get easier and easier with eager people lining up to help you.

Denis Waitley Quotes

Relentless, repetitive self talk is what changes our self-image.
Denis Waitley

Power of Self Talk by Deepak Chandrasekaran

Power of Self Talk

Life is like a big swing, dangling between the depths of happiness and sadness. As soon as we descend down the slope of sadness, we accelerate over the ever-feel-good acclivity of happiness. At times of distress, when we are down we slip over an abyss of emotional trauma and frustrations. One who can rise above the occasion, is the architect of many wins over sorrows.

To come above tougher times you have to pep yourself up, when you are feeling low, lost and confused. This can be done effectively by self-talk. Self-talk is a way of talking to oneself. It can be effectively used for soul searching. When talking to ourselves, we hardly lie as our conscience controls our speech. Self talk is efficient because when we are vocal about our thoughts, it makes a larger impact on our mind. Our brain then receives the same message from the mind as well as the ears. This repetition of pep talks and thoughts fine tunes the performance of the brain.

Self-talk is a software, which when properly loaded onto our mind directs ourselves for better results and a healthy mind. Actually many times in our life, we find others advising us to do better in studies, sports, life etc. We usually get bugged by these people and blank our ears out of their constructive suggestions. It is because it doesn’t come from within us. And when something comes from within you, you always try your best to do justice to it. Self- talk can thus ameliorate our status.

Each one of us have some good points and some bad ones. Though we hardly admit in public, we know in our mind that we could do better in some areas of our personal landscape. This get better attitude can be converted into a practical reality using self-talk.

If you are an introvert and you want to be the gregarious person like you friend next door, all you need to do is talk to yourself. Tell yourself with all the sincerity and emotions that “I can be like him. I am a natural born speaker. I do like people and speaking comes naturally to me. I just have to be ready to listen and speak”. Suppose you love a person and want to tell him or her, then just say to your selves “I love her with all my heart. She is the only one and I know it. If I don’t let her know, it would be grave injustice on my part. Every person loves to be loved. Even she will”. These are just some examples I have explained. It’s up to you to program your own mantra.

If you are highly optimistic to do better, there is no better motivator than self talk. So guys start talking.

– Deepak Chandrasekaran
March 22, 2001

Sports Psychology: Belief, Self Talk and Performance Enhancement

BELIEF, SELF TALK and PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT
by Joe Kolezynski. M.B.A., M.A.

One of the more frequently faced challenges experienced by athletes is that of how to improve their performance. They express frustration that they often possess identical, if not superior, physical attributes to their competition, yet they’re consistently being out performed by that competition. In many of these cases the factor that separates their performance from the competitions has been found to be rooted in their belief as to their ability to outperform the competition. In other words they are operating with a limiting belief as to their athletic ability and level of performance they are capable of achieving. Yet it is well documented that a individual’s core beliefs in any given area of their life will ultimately determine the reality they draw into their life-positive, negative or stagnant.

So how does one go about changing a limiting belief to a positive one — one that will result in improving your performance? It has been established by psychologists and neuroscientists that every person in the world carries on an ongoing dialog, or self-talk, of between 150 and 300 words a minute. This works out to between 45,000 and 51,000 thoughts a day. Most of out self-talk is harmless thoughts that serve our daily activities like, “I need to stop at the cleaners.” The danger is when inner dialogue takes on a negative connotation such as, “I’ll never be as good an athlete as he is,” “I don’t have the mental toughness to compete at this level,” or “I’ll never be that fast.” The ongoing negative reinforcement created by habitual negative self-talk results in the creation of a limiting belief(s) that goes on to become self-fulfilling prophecy.

Beliefs — positive or negative — are literally etched into our brain in comfortable grooves or neural pathways. Incoming data from our senses travel on these neural pathways on the way to interpretation in the brain. Therefore, if you desire to change an unresourceful/limiting belief into an empowering belief, you must rewire the negative neural track created in the brain.

This can be accomplished in precisely the same way the tracks were created: by using self-talk or, more specifically affirmations. An affirmation is a statement of fact or belief — positive or negative — that will lead toward the end result you expect. Anything that follows the phrase “I am,” such as “I am a peak performance athlete” or “I am quick and agile,” is an affirmation. The simplicity of affirmations often causes them to be overlooked. Nonetheless, affirmations are regularly used by professional athletes and successful business people.

The process for changing a limiting belief to a resourceful belief using affirmations is a simple one. First, identify the areas of your life which are not working to your satisfaction.

Next, write out the affirmations that represent things the way you desire them to be, they will be the vehicle for creating new resourceful/positive pathways.

Basic to formulating a new self-suggestion is that your affirmation is short and to the point — simple enough that a five year old child will understand it — and is always stated in the positive. Further, your affirmation should be stated in the present tense — as if it has already happened, for example, “I am a strong athlete.”
Now you are ready to begin your daily (minimum) reprogramming process:

* Sit upright in a comfortable chair.
* Close your eyes and take a couple of minutes to progressively relax.
* Release your body’s tight sharp focus on the physical world by taking yourself to an even deeper level of relaxation.
* Speak your affirmation aloud from five to twenty times (depending on the time you have and the number of beliefs you are reprogramming).

By speaking your affirmation aloud you are down-stepping your thoughts to the brains electrical network to speech, and you are involving more of your brain by including two more of your senses: auditory and kinesthetic. It is important that you trust this process and give your affirmation(s) time to achieve their desired outcome. Worry or self-doubt as to whether your affirmations are working only conveys to your subconscious worry and the belief that your desire may not come to pass or the affirmation may not succeed. Be patient, success is on the way.

In conclusion, remember that your beliefs are what produce your life’s experience, not the other way around. Orchestrate your beliefs using affirmations to create a life filled with successful experiences that reinforce the beliefs that created them.