Have you been listening in on the way You Talk to Yourself?

Article KAREN CHASTON – The Chaston Centre ~ For Meaningful Living

As a Beyond Loss Mentor, Author and Speaker, Karen was guided to co-found The Chaston Centre with her son Dan who passed away in 2011. It’s a place where we assist all who have suffered any kind of loss to create their more meaningful and better way of life.

Many people forget that the way they think and speak about themselves, is a CHOICE!

You may have spent your whole life talking to and about yourself in a negative way, though let’s make now the time that you stop continuing down that pathway that leads to self-destruction. Positive selftalk is to emotional pain as a pain pill is to physical pain. Let’s look at three things you can do to make your self-talk more positive and less limiting: 1. Listen to how you talk to yourself. The first step in improving your self-talk is to notice what your inner voice is saying. Is your self-talk mostly positive or mostly negative? Take some time each day to listen to, and even write down, what you’re thinking. 2. Challenge your self-talk. Ask yourself things like: • Is there actual evidence for what I’m thinking? • What would I say if a friend were in a similar situation? • Is there a more positive way of looking at this? 3. Change your self-talk. Try countering your negative thoughts with positive ones. For example, instead of saying “I made an idiotic mistake and I am hopeless at this job,” rephrase it to “I made an error; it’s not the end of the world. It’s part of the learning process, and that is how I learn and grow.”

Vincent Van Gogh was an expert at quietening the negative self-talk… “If you hear a voice within you saying, ‘You are not a painter,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”

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