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Gia Cilento

M&A, Business Advisor, Strategist

The Beatings Will Continue … 5 Ways To Tackle Negative Self-Talk

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Who’s really beating up on you the most? It’s probably you. Don’t believe me? Stop and notice the way you talk to yourself. One of the biggest obstacles to Inner Peace and developing your Inner Sanctum is the presence of negative self-talk and the way we beat ourselves up. For the most part, this self-talk is running in the background and you’re so used to it, you don’t always notice.

It’s time to pay attention. It’s time to stop beating yourself up day after day. It’s time to start giving yourself the support, compassion, love and nurturing you deserve, the same way you would for your family and friends. It’s time to cut yourself some slack and begin being nice to yourself.

For many people, their self-talk is a reflection of those criticisms that most highly impacted them when they were growing up, those things usually heard before the ages of 7 – 10 years old. This means the negative recordings have been in place and running constantly for a long time and impacting every area of your life. Think about it, if you talked to your friends the way you talk to yourself, you’d have no friends left.

Not sure this fits for you? Take a look at your life and you’ll find out. If you’ve had problems finding that special relationship that lasts, developing a career that really makes you sing or living the life you dream about then it’s time to take a look inside and make some changes.

Now is the time to start learning how to do that. Yes, I said learning. You’ve been beating yourself up for a long time now and neutralizing that behavior is going to take a bit of effort, for some it might actually take a lot of effort. But, it’s an effort worth pursuing. It’s a goal worth more than any other goal you might have because, once you’ve achieved it, every other goal will be SO much easier to attain.

TIme to get started. To begin, try listening to the way you talk to and treat yourself. Once you’ve taken the negative talk from the background to the foreground, its a lot easier to deal with and replace it with something that is encouraging and even friendly. Wouldn’t you like to be your own best friend?

Now that you’re aware of this underlying negativity you have going on, what do you do about it?

Here are a few things to get you started:

  1. Pay attention to the way you speak to yourself during the day. Just listen and take note. This isn’t about judging. It’s just about noticing.

  2. Try the 7-Day Criticism Challenge to help you see how much you complain and notice how much of the complaining is about yourself. This is a good exercise to force yourself to hear your self-talk on a daily basis and will help with step 1.

  3. Take a good look at yourself. Look in the mirror. What do you say to yourself? Do you like what you see? Listen. Now, look into your eyes. That’s you in there. The You who’s been waiting for some attention, love and nurturing. Purposely say something loving and nurturing to yourself. See how you react. This is a powerful exercise and can really help you get in touch with You. Practice this every morning until you feel comfortable saying “I love you!”

  4. Do one thing that you’ve been promising yourself you’ll do. The important thing here is to do that thing that you really want to do but haven’t done, and you have a lot of reasons why, lot’s of excuses for not giving yourself that something that you really want. Whether its exercise, some time off, a nice long bath, taking that class that  you’ve always wanted to take or whatever, the point is to DO IT! Prove to yourself that you are in your own corner. Be supportive of  your own dreams!

  5. Write a list of the things you’d like to hear from those you admire. Include statements you’d love to hear from your parents, your significant other, your favorite teacher, your best friend, etc. Write in full sentences and tape this up somewhere you can see it every morning. Add it to you phone, put it on your computer, make it easily and readily available. Read it every day, as many times as you can. Think about it before you go to bed at night, when you’re a bit drowsy. These are the phrases you’re going to place in your self-talk.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, by any means, but it’s a place to start. There are many ways to help you replace your negative self-talk with life-affirming, nurturing and loving messages including hypnosis, guided meditation, tapping and more. The first step, and probably the most important, is becoming aware that the negative self-talk is there in the background. From there your journey begins.

Remember that it’s a process and may take a bit of practice so don’t beat yourself up if you don’t eradicate the negative self talk your first day!

I hope this helps you begin your journey. Let me know how you’re doing and if you need any help along the way. Share your story in the comments below.