In the post about living with your inner critic, I talked about negative self-talk being one of the tools that your inner critic can use to get us in our heads and cause some degree of self-destruction. Negative self-talk is any inner dialogue that limits your ability to believe in yourself, your accomplishments and abilities. This type of self-talk can discourage you from making positive changes in your life and reaching your potential. Consequently, negative self-talk can have some pretty damaging effects especially on our mental health and wellbeing. In fact, negative self-talk can bring about a self-fulfilling prophecy where you believe all the bad things you tell yourself until you become those things.
Self-talk is the driver on the self-love train and how we communicate with ourselves plays a huge role in how we see and experience the world within and without. Unfortunately, there’s no off button for negative self-talk and a lot of the time it happens without our awareness. The most important thing we can do is to be mindful of these thoughts as they happen in the moment. Okay so what next after being mindful and catching these thoughts? Here are a few practices that can help you minimize and overcome negative self-talk.
1. Read, Write & Repeat Positive Affirmations
Repeating positive affirmations can help combat negative self-talk because this practice is basically doing intentional positive self-talk. In fact, you can make your daily affirmation be the mantra of the day and repeat those affirming words until you feel and believe it.
2. Remember That Thoughts & Feelings Aren't Reality
Thoughts are just thoughts babe. They may be the furthest thing from reality actually. When you catch a negative thought about yourself, think about it -where does it stem from, is it factually correct? I like creating a list comparing the negative thoughts vs the reality.
3. Name Your Inner Critic
Giving your inner critic a name allows you to detach from them and makes it easier to realize that you don’t have to agree with them all the time and can even help you challenge what they say. Mine is called Bel (after Belatrix from Harry Potter) so whenever she makes a negative (and often incorrect) statement about me, I just call her a hater and move past it haha!
4. Be Friendly With Yourself
We talk so nicely to our friends even when they mess up. Funny thing is, we don’t give ourselves the grace and compassion that we give our friends. Whenever you catch negative self-talk, be kind to yourself, remember that you’re the baddest bitch in existence, and challenge it with a positive fact about yourself.
5. Tell a Friend (Say It Out Loud)
Saying the negative thought out loud may help you see how ridiculous, unrealistic & unreasonable some of these thoughts are. Letting a friend know your negative thoughts can do the same too and can also bring in support and a kind reminder from your friend.
6. Switch From Negativity To Neutrality
Changing how we think and feel doesn’t happen overnight and it can sometimes be hard to replace the negative thought with a positive one. Changing the negative words to more neutral ones makes the negativity muted. For instance, “I can’t do this,” becomes “this is challenging.” Words like “I hate,” become “I don’t like.”
Consistently practicing these 6 things will make positive self-talk next to natural for you and will help you gain a more positive view of yourself and your life. I hope this post was helpful & I’d like to know what practices you do to minimize negative self-talk.