Here are five ways to transform your negative self-talk.

1. Monitor your self-talk, acknowledge, and catch your negative thoughts.

Listen for what you’re saying to yourself internally. This internal dialogue can be our best supporter or worst enemy. Recognise, acknowledge, and catch these harsh negative thoughts and internal dialogue. You’re not going to stop negative self-talk by ignoring the thoughts. You need to acknowledge the negative self-talk dialogue before you can manage it. Become a detective that recognises the “negative beliefs” that set you up to feel bad. Don’t be too harsh on yourself (we all have negative self-talk) and remember that these thoughts aren’t good or bad they just are and like clouds they can float in and out of our minds at different times.

2. Challenge negative thoughts.

You can identify and challenge negative thoughts that undermine your belief in your skills, abilities, and self-worth. Start by asking yourself – is this true? What evidence proves that this is true? What evidence proves this negative self-talk is false? “What might be a more helpful thought be?”

You can remind yourself that thoughts are not facts by catching the negative self-talk and then saying something like: “I am having this thought that I am not good enough to apply for that job, but I know that is not true”.

3. Acknowledge and celebrate the good.

We frequently pay more attention to the things we do wrong rather than focusing on what we get right or do well. Make an intentional effort to catch and acknowledge the great things you do, the times you get it right, achieve your goal, or have a win. Celebrate these, even if it’s just in a small way as this positive reinforcement will begin to reduce the dominance of your negativity bias. Remember what we consistently say to ourselves becomes our inner voice that will shape the rest of our lives.

4. Reframe the negative self-talk.

You can also manage your negative self-talk by reframing it in the following ways: a. Give your inner critic a nickname. When the negative self-talk starts up you can then say to yourself “oh that’s just ‘negative Nancy’ again, I don’t choose to listen to her”. When you think of your inner critic this way it’s easier to realise that you don’t have to agree with the thoughts, and easier to see how dominating some of your critical self-talk can be. b. Ask yourself if you’d say these types of things to a good friend? Would you like it if a good friend said them to you? We are the ones who live with ourselves our entire lives, so we need to be as kind to ourselves as a best friend would be.

5. Treat yourself with compassion.

When things are difficult and your stress levels are high, your inner critic will often kick off in full flight, making it crystal clear why the world is bad, you’re not good enough and everything is going to go wrong for you. It makes intuitive sense that the more stressed you are, the less compassionate you are towards yourself. However, this also works in reverse, the more self-compassion you show yourself, acknowledging and accepting your inner critic and negative self-talk and not beating yourself up about it, because everyone experiences that critical inner dialogue, the less stressed and anxious you’ll feel, and that critical internal dialogue will quieten down. Dr Kristin Neff’s work on self-compassion is a great place to start if you’d like to look into this further.

Life has ample obstacles without you constantly tearing yourself down with negative self-talk. Negative selftalk can do untold damage to your emotional health and wellbeing so it’s crucial to persevere so you can create a positive shift in your mindset and self-talk. If you have tried to change your negative self-talk and challenge your inner critic but feel as though you need more help, please reach out to a mental health professional.

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