Are you practicing GOOD Self Talk?

What is self talk?

Self talk is the ongoing language, words and phrases that you use to have personal and intrinsic conversations about yourself to yourself... whether it is said aloud or in your head.

How can self talk impact you?

Self talk can be viewed as both positive and negative depending on the situation.

Self talk can impact how you behave towards yourself and perform tasks. It can make a difference to your self image and what you think other people think about your appearance.

It can also influence your self esteem and find yourself comparing your skills and abilities to others. This in turn can affect your self confidence in possibly taking good risks and your self worth in the values that you hold for yourself as a person.

Be it positive or negative, self talk easily becomes a habit and can become addictive when it validates your temporary behaviour until you understand how it is affecting you.

▪Self talk about your past, present or future

Self talk can address your history or past experiences, give advice on how to act or give clarity to your current self and influence the projections of your future self.

It is important to know that your thoughts can be hijacked at a split second so recognising where the self talk is directed...past, present or future, learning how to replace negative self talk, understanding how to take control of your positive self talk, practicing and refining your methods, learn how to apply these to all situations you are faced with.

▪Moments when self talk can come into play.

Self talk can come in and out of action at any point of the day, throughout the day, any day of the week, month or year. It is non biased to a situation, time in your life, place you are in or people you are with. If self talk wants to happen it will happen, it is impulsive and abrupt! Whether you are at home watching TV and know you should be studying, or your given tasks at work that stretch your usual skills and remit...even if your with your child and helping them with homework…..self talk will come out to play!

▪Self talk Game Plan

1. Identify what tense you are thinking in - past, present or future.

2. Decide what could have triggered you to talk in this way.

3. Challenge the self talk by picking out the facts and the opinions

4. Is the talk helpful or unhelpful, how does it feel?

5. Weigh up which statements are most valid and valuable

6. Explore how the truth in the self talk statements can help or add to you and the situation you are facing

7. Solidify an understanding that this is momentary and not a reflection of your whole life.

8. Create a statement of self talk that highlights any silver linings - things to work towards rather than away from

9. Repeat, repeat, repeat - confirm and reaffirm it

10. Apply and adapt to as many situations as you can

Shared with love

Rhyana XOXO