The way you speak to yourself mentally and verbally has a powerful impact on your self-image. Berating or belittling yourself, minimizing your achievements or doubting your capabilities will most definitely create a sense of disempowerment, limiting your potential in virtually every aspect of your life.
On the other hand, positive and encouraging self-talk will contribute to inner strength and self-respect, which will drastically alter the way you see yourself and your potential in life.
Self-talk is like a recording that constantly plays in your mind, and much of the time you’re unaware of it because it occurs on a subconscious level. The messages you receive from this recording can include limiting beliefs that were formed throughout your lifetime, as well as negative or derogatory input from your present environment.
The good news is that these recorded messages CAN be changed! It’s even quite simple to do, but requires commitment, determination and consistent effort.
Below are a few simple ways you can use positive self-talk to change your mental recording and empower yourself:
Build yourself up.
If you’ve gotten used to tearing yourself down, you may not even notice how harshly you speak to yourself – but you’ll find yourself feeling sad, frustrated or guilty without understanding why.
To turn this around, you simply need to begin making a conscious choice to build yourself up as often as possible. Get into the habit of speaking encouragingly and expressing positive thoughts about yourself. For example, rather than saying, “Oh, you are such an idiot!” when you make a mistake, say, “Hey, that’s all right, everyone makes mistakes! Next time you’ll do better.”
Look at yourself in the mirror daily and find three positive things to say about yourself. You can compliment your physical features, personality traits or accomplishments – but be sure they are genuine compliments because your subconscious mind will know if you’re “lying.”
Most importantly, make it a daily habit to speak to yourself like you would a good friend who is in need of support and encouragement. You’d never say horrible, mean things to them, so don’t say them to yourself either!
Cheer yourself on.
Rather than dreading a difficult task and doubting your capabilities, become your own best cheerleader! When you’re getting ready to tackle something challenging, take a few minutes to scream and shout mentally that “you can do it; you can do it; you can do it!”
Also, be sure to regularly praise yourself for a job well done. These don’t have to be big accomplishments – just something to which you gave your best effort. For example, you could say to yourself, “I’m really proud of the way I handled that rude customer. I kept my cool and remained professional while I handled the problem.” Or, “I’m so proud of myself for finishing that project before deadline! Now I’ve got a couple of hours I can devote to myself, and I definitely deserve some downtime.”
Love, love, love yourself.
We often have the perception that self-love will happen naturally once we change something about ourselves (like losing weight or achieving a goal) but self-love has to come first! Begin expressing love for yourself exactly as you are on a regular basis. Love yourself not for the things you’ve done or plan to do, but WHO you are. Love your uniqueness, your personality, your character traits and everything else that makes you who you are. The more you love yourself, the stronger and more positive you’ll feel about your life.
You may feel silly following some of these suggestions at first because they’re likely different from the way you normally treat yourself. But the more you work with them and focus on having fun with them, the more effective they’ll be in erasing those old, negative messages and replacing them with more positive, empowering messages.
About The Author
Iain Legg is now giving away powerful secrets in his free ecourse. Empower yourself and change your life forever with pre programmed dreams. Free mind power course reveals all at http://www.mindpowercourse.com...
Thursday 2 October 2008
Wednesday 20 August 2008
Liking Yourself Just As You Are
Jeffrey Hardwick is a teacher, writer and speaker. He desires to help people live the life their meant to live by sharing life changing truths ... ...
Imagine truly liking yourself. What would that feel like? For me it is a feeling I have never experienced before. Pure joy. I have decided to really like myself just as I am. I do not have to change to like myself and neither do you.
Why did I choose to make a decision to simply like myself? Because I realized that no one can make me like myself but me. So what I did was ask this very simple question: What do I like about myself? Guess what happened? My focus changed. I was now focusing on what I liked about myself instead of wasting my time focusing on what I did not like.
When we ask ourselves the right questions, the right answers will appear. In just a few minutes I began to quickly write down the answers. The more I wrote the more answers came to me. Once I stopped writing, I really wanted to believe what I just wrote. So I read out loud what I liked about myself. I added just one word that released the joy that was residing within me. This is what I declared: I REALLY like myself. Then I added another really and then another. All of a sudden joy burst out of me. I was having so much fun doing this and continued to do this for quite some time.
Now I believed what I wrote down because I was hearing for the first time in my life that I really, really liked myself. What really made the difference was I decided to come up with reasons why I like myself. The results of doing this just solidified my belief that I really, really do like myself.
Then I made a statement that made me burst out in laughter. I really like liking myself. It made you smile too, right? Now I catch myself smiling so much that people are even taking notice.
What is so freeing about liking yourself just as you are is that you do not need anyone to like you for this to work for you. Liking yourself is independent from whether others like you or not. In other words, people can like or dislike you and you can keep on smiling while you like liking yourself. Something amazing will began to happen just like it did for me. People will be drawn to you. Why? If you had a choice to be attracted or drawn to someone who likes themselves or not, which one would you choose? It really depends on how a person views themselves and others.
Take inventory right now of the people in your life.
Would you say that most of them really like themselves or not? The people you hang around with makes a HUGE difference in your life. I'm sure you have heard the phrase: Birds of a feather flock together. But do you know the second part of that statement? Birds of a feather flock together and they are all going in the same direction. Do you want to go in the same direction your friends are going? If not, you can choose new friends. Why not choose those people who really, really like themselves?
The choice is up to you.
Jeffrey Hardwick is a teacher, writer and speaker. For over 10 years he worked with All Americans, National Champions and Player of the Year athletes on the mental game. While working with the athlletes and coaches he disocvered what he shared with them works for everyone whether they are an athlete or not. Jeffrey desires to help people live the life their meant to live by sharing life changing truths with them. He knows that each person has unlimited potential residing within them. Encouraging others to know the truth about themselves is what Jeffrey is passionate about. Visit http://motivatingmentors.com
Imagine truly liking yourself. What would that feel like? For me it is a feeling I have never experienced before. Pure joy. I have decided to really like myself just as I am. I do not have to change to like myself and neither do you.
Why did I choose to make a decision to simply like myself? Because I realized that no one can make me like myself but me. So what I did was ask this very simple question: What do I like about myself? Guess what happened? My focus changed. I was now focusing on what I liked about myself instead of wasting my time focusing on what I did not like.
When we ask ourselves the right questions, the right answers will appear. In just a few minutes I began to quickly write down the answers. The more I wrote the more answers came to me. Once I stopped writing, I really wanted to believe what I just wrote. So I read out loud what I liked about myself. I added just one word that released the joy that was residing within me. This is what I declared: I REALLY like myself. Then I added another really and then another. All of a sudden joy burst out of me. I was having so much fun doing this and continued to do this for quite some time.
Now I believed what I wrote down because I was hearing for the first time in my life that I really, really liked myself. What really made the difference was I decided to come up with reasons why I like myself. The results of doing this just solidified my belief that I really, really do like myself.
Then I made a statement that made me burst out in laughter. I really like liking myself. It made you smile too, right? Now I catch myself smiling so much that people are even taking notice.
What is so freeing about liking yourself just as you are is that you do not need anyone to like you for this to work for you. Liking yourself is independent from whether others like you or not. In other words, people can like or dislike you and you can keep on smiling while you like liking yourself. Something amazing will began to happen just like it did for me. People will be drawn to you. Why? If you had a choice to be attracted or drawn to someone who likes themselves or not, which one would you choose? It really depends on how a person views themselves and others.
Take inventory right now of the people in your life.
Would you say that most of them really like themselves or not? The people you hang around with makes a HUGE difference in your life. I'm sure you have heard the phrase: Birds of a feather flock together. But do you know the second part of that statement? Birds of a feather flock together and they are all going in the same direction. Do you want to go in the same direction your friends are going? If not, you can choose new friends. Why not choose those people who really, really like themselves?
The choice is up to you.
Jeffrey Hardwick is a teacher, writer and speaker. For over 10 years he worked with All Americans, National Champions and Player of the Year athletes on the mental game. While working with the athlletes and coaches he disocvered what he shared with them works for everyone whether they are an athlete or not. Jeffrey desires to help people live the life their meant to live by sharing life changing truths with them. He knows that each person has unlimited potential residing within them. Encouraging others to know the truth about themselves is what Jeffrey is passionate about. Visit http://motivatingmentors.com
Positive Self-Esteem and Negative Thoughts
Bob Perdue is the President of LifeNow Ministries whose vision is to provide encouragement and resources for followers of Christ to live life to the ... ...
It is nearly impossible to maintain a sense of positive identity or good self-esteem when our minds are filled with negative and critical thoughts. Unfortunately, many of our thoughts play in our minds just below the surface of our conscious thought. They are the underlying belief system that governs our life, the foundation of our identity but we are largely unaware of them and, without effort, could not verbalize them.
Take a minute to think about yourself. What do you really believe about yourself? Do you believe that you are a good person? Do you believe that you are capable of success? Do you believe that you have a value that attracts others to you? If the answer to any of these questions is "no", ask yourself why? If you are able to access the answer, you will have identified some of your negative self-talk that contributes to a feeling of low self-esteem.
Where do these thoughts come from? Most of them were formed early in our lives. The input of parents, peers, teachers, television, music and culture helped us to determine what we believed about life and ourselves. Unfortunately, children have a great ability to remember events and words from their past but are poor interpreters of those words and events, not having the depth or context with which to evaluate them. The result is that something said to us or some circumstance that impacted us takes on a distorted meaning and a belief about life and/or ourselves is internalized.
This is definitely true in my life. I experienced some sexual molestation from an older male. It was my first sexual experience and left me confused. As a child, I only had a certain amount of information with which to evaluate this event. I had heard about 'homos' and 'queers' at school and it was not a good label in the late 60's! My church taught that homosexuals would go to hell. Because of this information, I desperately did not want to be a homosexual but I had enjoyed the sexual release and so felt that I must be one. I internalized this truth but refuse to deal with it. It formed a negative identity in me. I wasn't being true to myself... I wasn't like other people... there was something wrong with me.
Only after becoming an adult did I have the courage to talk this event through and evaluate it with more information and with others. I was able to discard some of my negative beliefs about myself and accept myself for who I was!
If you struggle with a negative identity or low self-esteem, think through the following steps:
1) Determine the negative thoughts that run through your mind about yourself and about life. You may accomplish this by journalling, spending time with a therapist or just asking yourself deep questions about what you believe about life and about yourself.
2) Put words to these negative thoughts and write them down in a list. Read them out loud and hear how they sound. Allow yourself to react to these words. Share these words with others and allow them to react as well. Hopefully, this will help you to become uncomfortable with believing these thoughts.
3) Determine where these thoughts may have come from. What person, event or situation may have contributed to this internalized thought? It may be difficult to isolate a particular event but you may be able to determine a time period in your life when this became your belief.
4) Re-evaluate the situation, event or conversation that gave birth to these negative thoughts. Have you given too much power to this event or person? Have you interpreted it with too little information or input? Perhaps talking this out with a friend or a therapist would help.
5) Begin to tell yourself that these thoughts are not true. Whenever they come into your mind, cast them out as lies. In the Bible, the Apostle Paul instructed Christians in the early church at Corinth to "take every thought captive". He understood the power of negative thinking!
6) In conversation with friends or a therapist, come up with 3 or 4 positive statements about yourself or about life that can replace some of the more powerful negative thoughts that are on your list. Put these truths on 3 x 5 cards and post them in places where you will see them regularly. The negative thoughts have been reinforced for years and it will take awhile before you begin to believe these new truths.
As you work through these steps, you will become more aware of the negative thoughts that have been in your mind for years. You can allow the entrance of one of these thoughts to trigger an intentional effort to speak the new, more positive truth to yourself. Over time, as you begin to believe these positive truths, your view of yourself and of life in general will improve!
Bob's testimony and the keys to his success can be found in his book, 10 Life Choices available at http://www.lifenowministries.com or http://www.amazon.com Bob is a gifted speaker and has shared his testimony throughout the US, in Brazil, Portugal and Germany. Contact Bob at bob@lifenowministries.com
It is nearly impossible to maintain a sense of positive identity or good self-esteem when our minds are filled with negative and critical thoughts. Unfortunately, many of our thoughts play in our minds just below the surface of our conscious thought. They are the underlying belief system that governs our life, the foundation of our identity but we are largely unaware of them and, without effort, could not verbalize them.
Take a minute to think about yourself. What do you really believe about yourself? Do you believe that you are a good person? Do you believe that you are capable of success? Do you believe that you have a value that attracts others to you? If the answer to any of these questions is "no", ask yourself why? If you are able to access the answer, you will have identified some of your negative self-talk that contributes to a feeling of low self-esteem.
Where do these thoughts come from? Most of them were formed early in our lives. The input of parents, peers, teachers, television, music and culture helped us to determine what we believed about life and ourselves. Unfortunately, children have a great ability to remember events and words from their past but are poor interpreters of those words and events, not having the depth or context with which to evaluate them. The result is that something said to us or some circumstance that impacted us takes on a distorted meaning and a belief about life and/or ourselves is internalized.
This is definitely true in my life. I experienced some sexual molestation from an older male. It was my first sexual experience and left me confused. As a child, I only had a certain amount of information with which to evaluate this event. I had heard about 'homos' and 'queers' at school and it was not a good label in the late 60's! My church taught that homosexuals would go to hell. Because of this information, I desperately did not want to be a homosexual but I had enjoyed the sexual release and so felt that I must be one. I internalized this truth but refuse to deal with it. It formed a negative identity in me. I wasn't being true to myself... I wasn't like other people... there was something wrong with me.
Only after becoming an adult did I have the courage to talk this event through and evaluate it with more information and with others. I was able to discard some of my negative beliefs about myself and accept myself for who I was!
If you struggle with a negative identity or low self-esteem, think through the following steps:
1) Determine the negative thoughts that run through your mind about yourself and about life. You may accomplish this by journalling, spending time with a therapist or just asking yourself deep questions about what you believe about life and about yourself.
2) Put words to these negative thoughts and write them down in a list. Read them out loud and hear how they sound. Allow yourself to react to these words. Share these words with others and allow them to react as well. Hopefully, this will help you to become uncomfortable with believing these thoughts.
3) Determine where these thoughts may have come from. What person, event or situation may have contributed to this internalized thought? It may be difficult to isolate a particular event but you may be able to determine a time period in your life when this became your belief.
4) Re-evaluate the situation, event or conversation that gave birth to these negative thoughts. Have you given too much power to this event or person? Have you interpreted it with too little information or input? Perhaps talking this out with a friend or a therapist would help.
5) Begin to tell yourself that these thoughts are not true. Whenever they come into your mind, cast them out as lies. In the Bible, the Apostle Paul instructed Christians in the early church at Corinth to "take every thought captive". He understood the power of negative thinking!
6) In conversation with friends or a therapist, come up with 3 or 4 positive statements about yourself or about life that can replace some of the more powerful negative thoughts that are on your list. Put these truths on 3 x 5 cards and post them in places where you will see them regularly. The negative thoughts have been reinforced for years and it will take awhile before you begin to believe these new truths.
As you work through these steps, you will become more aware of the negative thoughts that have been in your mind for years. You can allow the entrance of one of these thoughts to trigger an intentional effort to speak the new, more positive truth to yourself. Over time, as you begin to believe these positive truths, your view of yourself and of life in general will improve!
Bob's testimony and the keys to his success can be found in his book, 10 Life Choices available at http://www.lifenowministries.com or http://www.amazon.com Bob is a gifted speaker and has shared his testimony throughout the US, in Brazil, Portugal and Germany. Contact Bob at bob@lifenowministries.com
Boost Your Confidence in Three Simple Steps
What is Confidence?
Confidence is the ability to believe or have faith in something. In the same way you will march across a stone bridge after seeing others go before you or because you know stone bridges are sound so it is with confidence. Knowledge and experience are key.
Your confidence level stems from your personal belief in yourself. If you are comfortable with who you are and your abilities, confidence is unlikely to be an issue for you. Some people appear confident in everything they do, others have certain areas in life where they are unsure of themselves and their ability. Self preservation and an instinct for survival will make you fear uncertain situations. Understanding how confidence works and accepting that it will be limited when a situation is potentially dangerous or unknown but high when the facts are known and the situation is safe gives you a starting point to developing a more confident persona.
Know Yourself
To improve your confidence you need to strengthen your personal belief in yourself and your abilities. People who lack confidence often have low self-esteem or a limited belief in their ability to do something. This often stems from a negative thought pattern - possibly due to what others have repeatedly said, what the person deeply believes about themselves, from a negative experience or lack of knowledge or skills. So many people who lack confidence seek perfection in themselves. They often look at others and in the same way they focus on an imperfection or inability in themselves they focus on an ability or strength of the other person and fail to see other people's flaws.
To improve your confidence it is important to develop a more balanced view of yourself in your place in the world. Accept that you have imperfections and weaknesses, but you also have strengths. To start this process you have to believe you can change and you have to be motivated and committed to change. Bear in mind that years of personal conditioning will mean that you will insist on denying yourself any strengths. If you cannot do this yourself consider using a counsellor, life coach or hypnotherapist to help you.
Know Your Stuff
If your lack of confidence is more around your ability to do things then all you need to understand is that confidence comes with knowing your subject and practise. It is perfectly normal to be nervous tackling something outside of your experience. The key here is to gather as much information as possible, learn and practise. This may mean developing new skills. The key here is recognising where your weakness is and doing something about it. You will never improve if you do nothing.
If you are in a situation where this is not possible then learn to feel comfortable admitting to being human and fallible! If you make mistakes think of them as steps towards success - it does not make you a failure. It is said that Thomas Edison took 10,000 attempts at the light bulb until he got it right - now that is perseverance!
Jacky Tustain is a Life Coach based in the UK, specialising in helping people turn their life around through raising confidence and self esteem.
For Life Coaching information check out her BeCanDo website or for confidence training her Inner Confidence ecourse.
Confidence is the ability to believe or have faith in something. In the same way you will march across a stone bridge after seeing others go before you or because you know stone bridges are sound so it is with confidence. Knowledge and experience are key.
Your confidence level stems from your personal belief in yourself. If you are comfortable with who you are and your abilities, confidence is unlikely to be an issue for you. Some people appear confident in everything they do, others have certain areas in life where they are unsure of themselves and their ability. Self preservation and an instinct for survival will make you fear uncertain situations. Understanding how confidence works and accepting that it will be limited when a situation is potentially dangerous or unknown but high when the facts are known and the situation is safe gives you a starting point to developing a more confident persona.
Know Yourself
To improve your confidence you need to strengthen your personal belief in yourself and your abilities. People who lack confidence often have low self-esteem or a limited belief in their ability to do something. This often stems from a negative thought pattern - possibly due to what others have repeatedly said, what the person deeply believes about themselves, from a negative experience or lack of knowledge or skills. So many people who lack confidence seek perfection in themselves. They often look at others and in the same way they focus on an imperfection or inability in themselves they focus on an ability or strength of the other person and fail to see other people's flaws.
To improve your confidence it is important to develop a more balanced view of yourself in your place in the world. Accept that you have imperfections and weaknesses, but you also have strengths. To start this process you have to believe you can change and you have to be motivated and committed to change. Bear in mind that years of personal conditioning will mean that you will insist on denying yourself any strengths. If you cannot do this yourself consider using a counsellor, life coach or hypnotherapist to help you.
Know Your Stuff
If your lack of confidence is more around your ability to do things then all you need to understand is that confidence comes with knowing your subject and practise. It is perfectly normal to be nervous tackling something outside of your experience. The key here is to gather as much information as possible, learn and practise. This may mean developing new skills. The key here is recognising where your weakness is and doing something about it. You will never improve if you do nothing.
If you are in a situation where this is not possible then learn to feel comfortable admitting to being human and fallible! If you make mistakes think of them as steps towards success - it does not make you a failure. It is said that Thomas Edison took 10,000 attempts at the light bulb until he got it right - now that is perseverance!
Jacky Tustain is a Life Coach based in the UK, specialising in helping people turn their life around through raising confidence and self esteem.
For Life Coaching information check out her BeCanDo website or for confidence training her Inner Confidence ecourse.
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