Saturday, June 2, 2007

The Secret of Positive Self Talk


Your self talk, the conversation that you carry on with yourself almost continually, is a vital component of your mental state. If your self talk is predominantly negative – “I can’t do…”, “I’m unhappy” – you will be unhappy, have low motivation and low self esteem.

If you self talk is mainly positive, the opposite will be true. You can use mental self help to change your self talk from positive to negative…

You talk to yourself and lot. It has been estimated that up to 1500 words per minute pass through your mind expressing an enormous number of thoughts that shape your view of the world, determine your mental state and just sometimes are part of your thinking process!

Much of your self talk is the result of thoughts coming from your subconscious mind and is a result of your past conditioning, your memories and other factors that affect your subconscious thought processes. It feels as if much of your self talk is out of your conscious control. Yet your self talk exerts a tremendous influence on your conscious mind and the results that you are able to achieve in life.

The good news is that psychological studies have shown that, with a little persistence, you can make your self talk more positive. When you do this you will benefit from a more positive mental attitude. If you talk to yourself about the way that you want your life to be, the chances are greatly increased that it will turn out that way.

Talk to Yourself to Improve Your Self Talk

There are a number of routes to more positive self talk. You can undergo extensive programs of self analysis to eliminate past traumas, you can use will power to stop yourself and so on. All these methods can take a long time and be quite difficult to apply to yourself.

One of the most effective ways to improve your self talk is to use positive affirmations. This is a remarkably simple way to change your self talk - you talk to yourself in a positive way and with a bit of persistence, your subconscious mind changes it’s habits and your self talk becomes more positive!

You may even be doing it already. When you’re faced doing something that you find a bit daunting, you may already be using simple affirmations such as “I can do it” to encourage yourself. This simple technique can be extended to anything that you want to achieve – greater happiness, greater success in life, kicking negative habits…

Affirmations have been proven to work by many successful people. However to get them to work, you have to do them correctly. Your affirmations need to be positive statements of what you want. Negative statements of what you don’t want will just add to your negative self talk and condition your mind to achieve what you don’t want. Affirmations also have to be charged with emotion and used regularly to be effective.

Negative self talk leads to negative mental attitudes and poor results in your life. One of the most powerful mental self help techniques for overcoming negative self talk is positive affirmations. If carried out regularly and correctly, positive affirmations can make your self talk more positive and improve your results in life.

Find out more about how to do positive affirmations correctly.

You can get a free e-course the success principle . Visit my website for more resources, articles, and support materials about success and personal growth .

Kevin John has spent many years helping businesses owners, aspiring business owners, and private individuals to develop the understanding and skills needed to achieve the success that they want.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kevin_J._John

1 comment:

Tony Papajohn said...

Positive affirmations are effective as far as they go. However, you can greatly increase their effectiveness by turning them into a question. For example, "I can do it!" may invite more negative self-talk like "I've never done it before." Instead, ask "What if I can do it? What will it feel like as I'm doing it?" This bypasses self-talk and engages the imagination. I've found this to be far more effective.