Talking to Yourself is Not Crazy - 7/6/2008

That’s right, regardless of what anyone says, talking to yourself is not crazy, especially when you do it on purpose, as an instrument you use to bolster your confidence and strengthen your ability for peak performance.

Self-talk is what you think and say about yourself, both in your head and aloud each an every morning of your life.  It is a method of helping you to feel good about yourself, to pepper your sub-conscious mind with thoughts and emotions that you want to imbed, so that when the time comes you can reference and express them with sincerity and conviction.

Okay, before you stop reading and cast this article aside, thinking that this is just another one of those, “You’d better do daily affirmations appeals, you generally hear from me – I am asking you to stick this one out while I attempt to give it a new wrinkle or twist.

Don’t panic, I still strongly encourage you to do vitally important daily affirmations which are one of the 4 essential tools (along with goals, visualizations and meditations) of personal freedom and empowerment.

The self-talk that I am speaking about on this short segment of MasterTalk is the talk you use to overcome adversity.  It is used for a specific purpose and not for general conditioning.

You see, whether you like it or not, as long as you are alive, there will be times that you will have to deal with one or more of life’s adversities – in fact, you can count on it.  Sooner or later something is going to rock your boat and upset your apple cart.

Adversity is inevitable!  And, believe it or not, it often times presents itself to test your inner strength and to provide you with an opportunity for personal growth.  Of course, the extent to which adversity affects you is determined by your perspective, past experience, degree of personal involvement and your personality characteristics.

For your understanding, I want to make it crystal clear that the self-talk you use BEFORE adversity comes into your life (your daily affirmations) are just as important for overcoming adversity as is the self-talk used AFTER it happens.

How you talk to yourself before you experience adversity has everything to do with the way it affects you and how you decide to work through it.  Negative self-talk (fear, worry and anxiety producing statements) makes it more difficult to shake off adversity and extends your recovery time indefinitely, because this kind of self-talk inhibits you from accepting circumstances so that you can move on.

However, when you use self-talk that promotes self-confidence in advance of adversity, it becomes easier to maintain a positive perspective.  After adversity you can employ conscious and positive self-talk to less its impact, enhance creativity, build optimism, change states and support a healthy self-image.

What a cool tool!  “I am getting through this” or “This is just a set-back that I will overcome” or “I will deal with it and move on” or “This calls for the courage I have been storing up” or “This adversity, whatever it is, is trying to teach me a lesson that I want to learn.”

What ever the words, the important thing is to consciously talk to yourself using more positive statements than negative or fearful ones.

You do this without being crazy.  You do it by Talking to Yourself!

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