How to Have More Positive Self Talk

Hi, I’m Paul Krismer. I’m your happiness expert, and this week, I’m going to be talking to you about negative self-talk and how to deal with it. And I have to admit, this one makes me a bit queasy because I hate the idea of just positive thinking will change your life. It sounds too simplistic. It’s frivolous. It’s kind of woo-woo, and I don’t know, just doesn’t sit well with me. And yet, there is fantastic research showing that more positive self-talk makes a difference in our lives. And it’s not surprising, really, right? It makes differences in big ways. You literally will come down with fewer colds in a year if you’re someone who has a more positive self-talk. It has things like evidence of lower rates of depression and your longer life, and the list goes on and on.

You hear me do this every week about the benefits of positive psychology. Well, this one, this particular intervention has lots of benefits too. So, stay with me today. I have five tips for improving your self-talk. As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So, stay tuned, and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful.

Well, what do I mean by self-talk? Well, self-talk is really the interior voice that is the commentator to our lives. It’s like a play-by-play commentator in a sports game telling you about your life. This is happening, that’s happening, why did I do that, and she said that mean thing to me, and I’ve got all these things to do on my list, and I’m never going to get them all done. That kind of stuff is your self-talk. And we’re all doing it all of the time, even if we’re not always aware of our self-talk. But that’s what it is. It’s the way we treat ourselves, and often there’s an emotional tone to the conversation we’re having with ourselves. And I want to say that self-talk is, we shift it to something that’s more positive, encouraging, and uplifting, it’s not just self-deception.

It’s not simply telling yourself things that you wish were true but aren’t true. That’s not the point. Now, there’s a very cute little video that I’m going to ask David to link in the description below. This shows you this little girl who’s doing amazing positive self-talk in the mirror, and she is not busy doing self-deception. That point will be made very clear by that cute little video. It’s worth watching.

Okay, here’s your five tips. First one, notice the self-talk. And that is not in and of itself easy to do. I’ve got two tips for you within this tip. And that’s first of all, when you’re feeling bad, when you can feel the emotional tone inside yourself is not great, pause and reflect. Maybe even take out a piece of paper and start writing down what are the thoughts in your head. And usually, if you do this exercise, they’ll come pretty readily. You’ll start to recognize what you’re telling yourself. The second one you hear so often from me is meditate. Meditation is all about creating some separation between our thoughts and emotions and our awareness, so that we can see thoughts and emotions with a bit of perspective, recognizing them as separate from ourselves and also simply recognizing them at all. Very important, meditation.

Second tip, challenge your thoughts. Challenge those negative self thoughts. Question them. Do battle with them, to a certain extent. And that may sound difficult as well, but you do this all the time for the people that you love. The friends in your life, when they’re feeling discouraged or down or being hard on themselves, you will come to the rescue and say kind, nice things that you feel generously moved to give to them. Well, we’re so often our worst critics to ourselves. And so this tip is to really, when you’re feeling down on yourself, ask yourself in a very genuine way, how would I treat a friend in similar circumstances? And then talk to yourself that way. What kind of encouragement would you give a friend? How would you reframe their thinking? How would you give them some bigger, broader perspective on who they are and what’s important in their lives, right?

Third thing, make a detailed list of your strengths, the good things about you. Now, this one’s very real, and there’s great science behind it. And there’s even some fairly scientific assessments you can get done on yourself. I always, always, every single time I have a coaching client, I use these kinds of assessments. The first one I’d recommend is VIA Character Strengths. I think it costs like 25 bucks online, and it gives you a survey of your best character strengths, the values and the ways that you approach life that are most remarkable. And they’re always beautiful and encouraging. The second scientifically valid assessment is Gallup Strengths 2.2. I think this one costs about 20 bucks U.S., and that’s the simpler version, which is the top five of your Gallup strengths. It’s all you need, you don’t need to know what your 34th strength is, your top five is all you need to know, and they’re powerful.

Once you see yourself in this lens of how you contribute in the greatest ways to the world, it’s genuinely empowering. There’s the Values Assessment you can do on my website for free, David will create a link in the description below. There’s also an exercise you can do on my website called the Peak Experiences Exercise, and all four of these things will help you to see yourself in a light that’s very positive, accurate, and empowering. Because once you know your strengths and what qualities you have that make you a good person, it’s easier to remind yourself in times when things aren’t going exactly as you’d want, what it is that you have as assets that are part of who you are, make up your general fundamental character, and you bring those strengths into all aspects of your lives.

Fourth tip, identify one or two small positive actions that you can take to improve your life, really small. It’s all about just getting a little bit of momentum, lifting off. And so if there’s concern about your diet, well, do one thing different for breakfast tomorrow, that’s it, one small thing. If you’re concerned about a particular relationship that it’s a bit not perfect, we’ll do one small thing that’s going to improve that relationship. And, you know, we can’t guarantee that these things are going to make a world of difference. It’s the sense of self-empowerment, it’s the self, a sense of efficacy, that you can make a difference in your life. It’s not about what difference you make to other people, it’s how you feel about yourself. So, do one or two small things. Make right, as soon as this video is over, write them down, make a commitment to yourself, make them super easy so that in the next half hour, you can do these two things. The fifth tip is this:
Be with positive people, and this one’s not easy. If you’ve got a whole bunch of Negative Nellie’s, just think of who the people are that are closest to you in your life, and are they people who generally lift you up and have a positive sense of optimism about the world around them? And if those people are near you, great! Hang on to them tight, spend lots of time with them. If there’s some people who are very, very negative, well, I know it’s not always easy to cut them out, maybe impossible if there’s someone that you live with. But be very cautious about how you spend your time, and to the extent that you can, bring more people into your life who are highly positive. And if you’ve got very, very negative people in your life, well, maybe start developing a strategy to move some of those people out of your life. We are the average of the five people we spend the most time with, so if you spend, it makes sense, right? If you spend time with five people who are super positive, optimistic, and getting stuff done in their lives, well, you’re gonna be like those people. And similarly, if you’re spending a lot of time with people who are pretty negative, gossiping, pessimistic, those people are going to deeply influence how you are in life. So be very cautious about who you spend your time with.
Look, all of these tips are very practical, they’re doable, and they genuinely make a difference in the way that we talk to ourselves, the way we portray and depict our outlook on our lives. And the secret to all of these tips is the frequency. It’s this idea that practice does make perfect. If you just implement these tips today, you probably won’t see a big difference. But if you stay consistent, looking at your self-talk, and in small ways, massaging it to be something different on a consistent basis, in relatively short periods, you’re going to start having fundamental, important changes in your life. So with that, I leave you at the end of this video today. Thanks for watching! If you like the content, click the like button, share this video with your friends and family. It contributes to a more happy world generally around you. Thanks so much, bye for now!