How to squash negative self talk in 5 easy steps

Do you ever wonder where that negative inner voice in your head comes from?  The one that never seems to have anything particularly useful to say, can make your thoughts resemble a broken record and no matter how hard you try to ignore it, never goes away.

Like a shadow you can’t escape, that negative self talk has spent years feeding messages to you, but unlike a good friend who supports and encourages you, the inner voice is more likely to resemble public enemy number one.  It has convinced you that you aren’t good enough, you’re not worthy, pretty enough, thin enough, or smart enough to the point you have become to believe it.

When you try to ignore it and make positive changes or go for something, it’s there in the background, watching you and waiting for you to fail. And when you do fail and don’t get that interview or job, get rejected by someone you like, put the weight back on, don’t pass your driving test or any other plethora of actions, it smiles smugly to you and say’s ‘I told you so’.

Negative self-talk is incredibly damaging to our self esteem and confidence, yet sadly we start to listen to our inner voice at a very young age, so for the majority of you reading this, you may well have been listening to it for over twenty years.

This negative self talk and our beliefs about the world and who we are are formed before the age of six.  Up until this age we are in the theta/delta brain wave state, which is akin to being in a hypnotic trance for the first six years of our life.  We are like giant satellite dishes absorbing every sensory message around us, receiving much of this information from our main care givers.  As we grow up, we subconsciously go in search of evidence that the beliefs we have formed are true, ingraining them further into our mind, adding further fuel to that inner voice.

Luckily I have discovered that I can (most of the time!) gag my inner voice.  Through my training I discovered and have proven with hundreds of clients that a belief is just a thought that you keep thinking and it can be dismantled.  The more we dismantle them, the quieter our inner voice becomes.

Negative self talk – squash it now!

These 5 simple steps if followed with daily practice can help you to take back control and stop that inner voice from controlling you and your life.

STEP ONE

Become aware of the messages your inner voice is feeding you.  Becoming more conscious of these messages allows you to develop an awareness of your inner voice and when you are listening to it.  By creating a deeper awareness of your thoughts, you can learn to consciously stop the inner voice in its tracks.

STEP TWO

Reframe the thought in your mind.  The negative messages we feed ourselves are never true, we just choose to believe that they are.  When you become aware of a particular message or thought, challenge it – how true is it really?  Maybe for example, you haven’t got everything right so far in your life, but have you always got everything wrong?  Even if you feel you have got a lot of things wrong and made mistakes, how else do you learn?  When you notice that inner voice telling you ‘I never get anything right’, reframe it to ‘so far I haven’t got this right, but I look forward to getting it right’.

STEP THREE

Look for things that make you appreciate where you are.  Maybe you aren’t where you want to be at the moment, but rather than dwell on that, change the thought to one from the Abraham Hicks teachings; “There are many people right now experiencing the dream that is coming for me, who were at one time standing right where I’m standing. I’m right on track. There is not anything amiss here. Everything is unfolding perfectly. I am perfect where I am and gravitating to something that will satisfy me even more.” That’s the attitude that lets it expand.

STEP FOUR

Feed yourself positive messages every day.  I often set my clients the task of finding one thing that they like about themselves every morning and include this as part of their morning schedule so that it  becomes as habitual as brushing their teeth.  For clients that have spent years listening to negative inner talk about their physical appearance, I get them to start with their qualities such as ‘I am generous with the time and attention I give my loved one’, ‘I have a big heart’, ‘I am renowned for my cooking’, ‘I can make people laugh’, ‘I am very organised’.

Once you have become more comfortable with finding good attributes, you can move onto your physical attributes such as ‘I have sparkling eyes’, ‘I have a nice smile’, ‘I have a healthy body’, ‘I have thick shiny hair’.

The inner voice currently feeding you messages about all the things you don’t like about yourself is only a result of years of feeding yourself and listening to the negative messages.  Make a pledge now to be good to yourself and feed yourself messages about you that are positive.  A belief is just a thought that you keep thinking, so I wonder how long it will take you to start to believe how good you feel about yourself?

STEP FIVE

The most important relationship that you have is the one with yourself.  If a close friend began telling you how worthless they felt and how they haven’t amounted to anything, you wouldn’t agree with them would you?  No, you would begin by pointing out all the things that they had achieved in their life and their qualities as a friend.  So why then do you agree with yourself when you feel worthless or incapable or inadequate?  If you talked to your friends the way you talk to yourself would you have any friends left?

We are so focused on what other people think about us, but what about what we think about ourselves?  Become your own best friend and make a pledge to nurture that relationship with the things you say to yourself, what you feed yourself and what interesting things you do with yourself.

And finally…..

When you shift your thinking, you shift more than your beliefs; you also raise your energy and vibration.  When your energy is high, anything is within your reach, a fantastic new job, a relationship, a change in direction, or any manor of new opportunities.  Don’t let your negative inner voice be the driver of your journey through life, take back control of the steering wheel and who knows where it could lead you!

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Sara Maude

Sara Maude is an Edinburgh Hypnotherapist, Solution-Focused Psychotherapist, EFT Practitioner, Transformational Coach and International Wellbeing Trainer providing in-person and online sessions. Sara provides problem-free therapy which goes deep into the heart of the unconscious mind to create powerful lasting change.