How to Talk to Yourself Positively

According to National Science Foundation, our brains produce as many as 50,000 thoughts per day, and a huge part of these thoughts are inner thoughts. We talk to ourselves most of the time. And our self-talks have become one of the main factors that influenced our mindset, our actions, and ultimately, the results we get in life.

Self-talk, or your inner dialogue is important because you provide opinions and evaluations on what you’re doing as you’re doing it.

Imagine when you are watching a football game, and the announcers are commenting on the game. Your self-talk is just like the sports announcer who is commenting on the players or the team’s performance.

The only difference is that for sports commentary, the players or the athletes can’t hear it, but for self-talk, you can actually hear what you tell yourself all the time.

When your alarm fires off in the morning, you start talking to yourself, “It’s 7 AM, time to wake up.”

We are constantly talking to ourselves as long as we are awake.

Even at this moment, you are talking to yourself, such as:

• “Why am I reading this article?”
• “Should I continue to read this article?” (obviously, you should)
• “What should I get for lunch later?”

What you tell yourself can greatly impact your life. This is because your thoughts can influence your mood and how you make decisions.

How Your Self-Talk Affects You

Self-talk is something you do naturally throughout your waking hours. And it depends on how you talk to yourself.

If you constantly talk to yourself in a negative way, you may end up living a negative life.

On the other hand, if you talk to yourself positively, you will look at things from a brighter side and as a result, you may end up living a better life.

Consider these 2 inner statements you tell yourself:

1. “I’m going to share my opinion in the meeting later because I have something important to contribute that can benefit the company and my team.”
2. “I don’t want to speak up in the meeting later because if I take it wrongly others will think that I’m a fool.”

The first statement sounds positive and you may share your thoughts during the meeting.

As for the second statement, it sounds more negative and it prevents you from sharing your opinion in the meeting.

As you can see, this is how your self-talk can affect your life.

More importantly, it is how you choose to talk to yourself that matters.

When you tell yourself positive words like, “I can do this”, highly likely, you are going to take action and do it.

On the contrary, if you tell yourself, “This is difficult and I don’t think it is possible”, guess what, highly likely, you are not going to take any action.

My friend, how you talk to yourself, matters.

Even now, as I’m writing this article, I’m feeling a little tired, but I keep telling myself that I just need to continue to write to build up the momentum, and then the mood will come.

And I’m glad that I did.

If you are reading up to this point, it shows that positive self-talk works, because I have completed this article. 🙂

I believe you will agree with me too, that positive self-talk is important and can greatly impact and affect your life.

The question is how can we learn to talk to ourselves in a more positive way? How can we manage our self-talk so that we are able to inject positive energy and live a better life, right?

Here’s how…

How to Make Positive Self-Talk Works

Your actions are inspired by your thoughts. And thus, when you change how you talk to yourself, you can change your action.

Here are a few tips you can consider when it comes to changing your inner thoughts and making positive self-talk works for you.

1. Be conscious of how you talk to yourself

The first thing you need to do is to be conscious of how you talk to yourself. Take note of your self-talk. Notice how you talk to yourself.

I know this is difficult and challenging because we talk to ourselves in a natural and automatic way. Unless you are conscious of it, it is difficult for you to find out how you talk to yourself most of the time.

But you can’t fix what you don’t know is broken. You can only fix something when you know it is broken.

You can also record your self-talk by writing down your thoughts in your journal. Set a notification to ping you every hour or two to write down what you think at that moment.

The key is to notice the pattern of how you talk to yourself.

And when you notice that you are talking to yourself in a negative way, it is time to change it.

By the way, if you want to learn how to change your brain and reprogram your subconscious mind, you should attend this free web class from New York Times best-selling author, John Assaraf. He will show you how to get rid of the limiting beliefs that prevent you from achieving greatness in life.

2. Keep an eye on your moods, feelings, and emotions

Another good indicator of how you talk to yourself is to take note of your moods, feelings, and emotions.

This is because the way we talk to ourselves can directly influence our feelings.

You feel angry when you tell yourself, “This guy pissed me off by cutting the line and I won’t let him do that.”

You feel inferior when you tell yourself, “I know that I’m just not good enough. I failed again.”

As you can see, your self-talk determines your mood. So whenever you are feeling sad, inferior, angry, or any negative emotions, notice what you talk to yourself, and then change it.

Read: How to Increase Your Mental Strength and Become Tougher

3. Replace the negative self-talk

Yes, to make yourself feel more positive, all you need to do is to replace the negative thoughts with the positive ones.

Instead of saying, “I can’t do this”, say, “Maybe I can just try”.

Rather than telling yourself, “I’m tired and sleepy, maybe I should do this tomorrow”, tell yourself, “What is the one small thing I can do for just 5 minutes?”

Another good way to stop your negative self-talk is to use the word, “cancel”.

Whenever you discover that you are talking negatively to yourself, just shout “cancel” out loud.

Do something that will disturb your negative thought pattern and immediately break the loop. The more you dwell in the negative cycle, the more negative you will become.

Read: 7 Ways How to Stop Negative Thoughts from Entering Your Mind

4. Constantly program positive thoughts into your mind

If you want to make positive self-talk part of your daily routine, what you can do is constantly program good thoughts into your mind.

For instance, read books. Read personal development books. Read success stories of how people went from rock bottom to living a successful life.

These inspirational stories will motivate you and change the way you think. Not sure what books to read? Check out these success books on my list.

When you insert more ‘files’ or thought-references into your mind, you can refer to them whenever you need to.

For example, when you feel like a failure, you can instantly remind yourself how successful people like Elon Musk and Les Brown went through failures after failures, but still managed to make it.

This is why reading is important. Especially if you read materials that inspire you.

The more you inject or feed your mind with positive materials, the more positive you will become.

5. Practice affirmations

Affirmation is powerful. It is a form of inner self-talk that you can use to alter your thinking that will eventually give a positive impact on your life.

For instance, if you keep telling yourself, “I’m a successful internet marketer and I run multiple online businesses that generate 6 figures a year”, eventually, it can come true.

When you say something to yourself on a daily basis and if you fully believe in it, you can bring it into your life.

The way you act and the way you live will change. Such is the power of positive affirmations.

If you have no idea how to make your affirmation work, go through these 2 guides:

• How To Make Your Affirmations Work – The 5 Simple Rules To Follow
• 77 Positive Affirmations to Start the Day

6. Surround yourself with positive people

You become who you mix with most of the time.

The people you talk to most of the time can influence your thoughts. This is because the conversation you are involved in can influence the way you think.

If you want to become an eagle and soar in the sky, stop mixing yourself with the turkeys.

Think about it, when you always mix with a group of drinkers, what will you do?

Most likely, you are going to order a couple of what these people drink because you want to fit in.

And hence, when you mix with business people and you join them for dinners, what do you guys talk about most of the time? Business.

And this will somehow inspire you to want to start your own business too.

Therefore, who you mix with will affect your thinking and ultimately, change your life.

So, my friend, mix with positive people if you want to think positively and change how you talk to yourself.

Conclusion

The way you talk to yourself and your inner dialogues will determine how you feel and ultimately, what kind of decisions and actions you will take in life.

Therefore, keep an eye on your self-talk. If you constantly talk to yourself in a negative way, you should change it. Follow the 6 suggestions above to change the way you talk to yourself. Turn negative self-talk into positive conditioning that will help you achieve greater success in life.