Positive self-talk involves having an inner dialogue that is primarily optimistic and positive. These thoughts and statements are the ones that build you up, increase your motivation and make you feel good about yourself and your abilities. How you talk to and about yourself can have a major impact on many areas of your life. Self-talk refers to the way your inner voice makes sense of the world around you. How you communicate with your inner self can affect everything from your self-esteem to your motivation to your relationships.
You can get a better idea of what we mean by positive self-talk by contrasting it with its polar opposite: negative self-talk. Where positive self-talk is kind, encouraging and supportive (kind of how you would talk to a good friend or loved one), negative self-talk can be caustic, unhelpful and even cruel.
Positive Self-Talk
- “I made a mistake.”
- “This is hard, but I’ll keep trying.”
- “I’m still figuring things out.”
- “I can keep learning and get better.”
- “I know I can succeed.”
- “I’m able to grow and change.”
Negative Self-Talk
- “I’m an idiot.”
- “I’ll never get it right; I give up.”
- “I never do anything right.”
- “I’m terrible at this.”
- “I’m not good enough.”
- “I’ll never change.”
Negative Self-Talk
If your self-talk is generally negative you may be perceiving events in your life as more stressful than they need to be and creating unnecessary anxiety and stress for yourself. For example:
- You may be attributing negative motivations to well-meaning people.
- Or you might perceive yourself as less equipped to handle the challenges you face. This explains why you might be seeing only more negatives than positives in what you are facing in life.
- You may also succumb to rumination, a pattern of negative thinking that can unnecessarily consume your idle time and bring stress from the past into the present without leading to any resolution.
How to Switch to Positive Self-Talk
If you frequently engage in negative self-talk, there are things that you can do to start switching to more positive self-talk:
Notice Your Patterns
The first step toward change is to become more aware of the problem. You probably don’t realize how often you say negative things in your head or how much it affects your experience. Once you become more aware of your patterns, you can start making a conscious choice to shift your internal dialogue to be more positive, optimistic or neutral.
Write in a Journal
Journaling can be a helpful tool for shifting your thoughts to be more positive. You might try:
- Carry a journal around with you and jot down negative comments when you think them
- Write a general summary of your thoughts at the end of the day
- Write about your feelings on a specific topic
Once you collected some thoughts, you can later go back to analyse the contents of your journal. Journaling can be an effective tool for examining your inner process and spotting harmful patterns.
Thought-Stopping
As you notice yourself saying something negative in your mind, you can stop your thought mid-stream by saying to yourself, “Stop.” Saying this aloud will be more powerful.
Replace Negative Statements With Positive Self-Talk
A good way to stop a bad habit is to replace it with something better. Once you’re aware of your internal dialogue, here are some ways to change it:
Milder Wording
Have you ever been to a hospital and noticed how the nurses talk about ‘discomfort’ instead of ‘pain’? This is generally done because ‘pain’ is a much more powerful word, and discussing your ‘pain’ level can actually make your experience of it more intense than if you’re discussing your ‘discomfort’ level.
You can try this strategy in your daily life. In your self-talk, turning more powerful negative words to more neutral ones can actually help neutralize your experience. Instead of using words like ‘hate’ and ‘angry’ (as in, “I hate traffic! It makes me so angry!”), you can use words like ‘don’t like’ and ‘annoyed’ (“I don’t like traffic; it makes me annoyed,” sounds much milder, doesn’t it?)
Negative to Neutral or Positive
As you find yourself mentally complaining about something, rethink your assumptions.1 Are you assuming something is a negative event when it isn’t, necessarily?For example, having your plans cancelled at the last minute can be seen as a negative, but what you do with your newly-freed schedule can be what you make of it. The next time you find yourself stressing about something or deciding you’re not up to a challenge, stop and rethink, and see if you can come up with a neutral or positive replacement.
Self-Limiting Statements to Questions
Self-limiting statements like “I can’t handle this!” or “This is impossible!” are particularly damaging because they increase your stress in a given situation and they stop you from searching for solutions. The next time you find yourself thinking something that limits the possibilities of a given situation, turn it into a question. Doesn’t “How can I handle this?” or “How is this possible?” sound more hopeful and open up your imagination to new possibilities?
