Life Skill

How does positive self-talk in 5 easy steps gain success?

Self-talk is the way you talk to yourself or your inner voice. You might not be aware that you’re doing it, but you almost certainly are.

Self-talk is important because it has a big impact on how you feel and what you do. You may not realize it, but your self-talk may be sabotaging your stress levels! Self-talk—the way your inner voice makes sense of the world around you and the way you communicate with your inner self—can greatly affect your stress levels in multiple ways.

Self-talk is the act of talking to yourself either aloud or mentally. No matter good or bad, these are the messages that you are telling yourself all day long about yourself.

The messages you tell yourself will encourage and motivate you, or they will limit you because they are negative.

Positive self-talk is an inner monologue that makes you feel good about yourself and everything going on in your life. It’s an optimistic voice in your head that encourages you to look at the bright side, pick yourself up when you fall, and recognize when you fail.

Let’s see below for 5 steps to get positive self-talk.

5 steps to positive self-talk

1.  Believe in Your Success

Believe in your ability to succeed. Believe in the abilities and skills that you have, so that you can propel yourself toward success.

Doubting yourself holds you back from trying and thus holds you back from succeeding. Believe you can succeed, even if it takes multiple tries.

For instance, if you go into a workout class and have already told yourself that you won’t be able to complete it, then you will indeed fail. You are setting yourself up for failure when you go into a situation telling yourself mentally that you can’t or won’t be able to complete the task at hand.

Commit to telling yourself that you can do it. Even if you have to modify your movements to keep going, tell yourself that you will not quit. Tell yourself that one way or another you will get the job done.

You need to tell yourself you can do what needs to be done and you can succeed at whatever you put your mind to. If you don’t believe in yourself, then who will?

2. Don’t Fear Failure.

Don’t fear failure as it is often the road to success. Some of the greatest success stories in life are of people who failed multiple times before becoming successful. If they had given up the first time after failing, then they never would have become hugely successful.

       Fear of failure holds back many people from ever even trying to succeed. They remain in their status quo in life because they live in fear of failure.

       If Colonel Saunders had given up after his first three candy companies failed, he wouldn’t have gone on to create the world-famous Kentucky Fried Chicken company. He is just one of many examples who failed many times before finally succeeding.

Don’t allow fear to hold you back from trying. Tell yourself you can keep trying if you do fail! Don’t take the failure and accept it. Instead, reframe the experience as an opportunity for more growth and development of whatever job you may be doing.

 3. Don’t Compare Yourself to Others

When you are constantly comparing what you lack to what others have, you can easily get down on yourself.

It is easy to become negative about your life if you are comparing yourself with others.  Instead, find gratitude in what you do have, rather than concentrating on what you don’t have.

For example, you may have a casual friend who is always getting a new vehicle every two years. They are always top of the line, beautiful vehicles. You, on the other hand, are driving a ten-year-old minivan. You have kids the same age, the same educational background, and you both are married to successful husbands. You compare yourself to what she has and wonder why you can’t also have a new vehicle each year.

What you don’t know is that she and her husband have a large amount of debt. They do not live within their means and have planned very little for their retirement. You and your husband have been very responsible in your spending and retirement planning.

It is not wise to compare yourself to this woman or anyone else because you likely don’t know the whole story.

You can always find others who are better off than you or worse off than you. It’s more important to concentrate on yourself and on being grateful for your own life.

Live your life and stop making any comparisons.

4. Be Grateful

A great way to find the positive in your life and create positive self-talk is to recognize the things in your life for which you can be grateful.

    Finding things, you are grateful for in life daily helps to improve your attitude, which will help you have better, more positive self-talk.

One way to practice gratitude is by starting a gratitude journal. Use it to write the things you are grateful for each day.

Some of the things will big and some will be small. This will help you focus on the good things that are happening in your life, even if it was something as simple as seeing a rainbow or spending time walking and talking with a friend.

The expression of your gratitude in a journal makes these emotions and experiences more tangible. You are helping yourself focus on the goodness in your life.

It doesn’t need to be a long-winded journal either. You can simply start by finding a notebook and jotting down 3 to 5 things at the end of each day that are grateful for on that particular day.

5.  Visualize Your Success.

Your ability to visualize your success is tied to your ability to actually achieve success.

For example, if you want to run 10 miles today, envision the beginning, middle, and end. Think about how you will prepare for your run. Think about what it will feel like as you get going and how you plan to push through the tough moments you will have on your run.

Strategize about what you will self-talk to keep yourself going when times get tough. Also, think about how you will react when things get rough and tell yourself that you will push through, even when it gets really difficult.

Then, envision yourself finishing your run and how you will feel once you complete your goal. Visualize the entire process and how you get to your success. This will help you when you get to the actual run because you have thought about your commitment to that success and what it takes to get there.

You have also created strategies for pushing through any bumps in the road to keep yourself going. You are committed to not quitting.

Envisioning the entire run, which includes the difficulties, will help you get to the end goal which is successful completion of the 10 miles.

Visualizing helps you think positively about your situation and encourages you to see that your vision of success is possible.