When it comes to talking like you like yourself, there is only one rule. Always, always, always keep it positive!
Positive self-talk is the first step to building your self-confidence and your self-esteem. After all, if you can’t talk nicely to yourself, it’s hard to believe that anyone else will.
I know it’s hard to stay positive all the time. It’s very easy in our rushed and stress-filled lives to focus on the negatives like “I’m late again!” or “I’m so stupid” or “I’ll never be able to do this.” But self-talk is really self-fulfilling prophecy, so if you continually berate yourself with your shortcomings, then you will manifest those shortcomings instead of the positive, successful results you really want.
Fortunately, there are things you can do to turn your negative self-talk into positive reinforcement. Here are my five favorite ways to “talk like you like yourself“.
1. Accentuate the Positive
As I said at the beginning of this article, always keep your self-talk positive. The goal of self-talk is really to keep your energy high and focused on success. Using positive statements and affirmations to push yourself toward success is one of best ways to build your self-confidence that I know of. The more you tell you self you can do something, the more you start to believe it; and the more you start to believe in your own abilities the more confident become.
2. Eliminate the Negative
No amount of focusing on negative thoughts and situations will turn them into positives. No bitching at yourself or beating yourself up will help to make you feel better about yourself. Instead the opposite will happen. When you use negative thought patterns you only undermine whatever confidence you have managed to find for yourself. And if you’re already struggling with low self-confidence or self-esteem, continually berating yourself with comments like “I’m such a dummy” or “I’m no good at this” will only reinforce your low opinion of yourself.
To reverse this trend, one thing you can do is to immediately overrule your negative thought with a positive one. So if you’re telling yourself that you’re stupid or a dummy, as soon as you have that thought replace it with something positive. For example, if your negative thought is “I’ll never get this right” you could override that with the positive thought “I AM focused on learning how to do this successfully.”
3. Really Like Yourself
“Talk like you like yourself” implies that maybe you don’t like yourself so much, but you’re learning. The next step is to take it to the next level and really like yourself. Don’t just act like you do, or say the words… put some emotion and energy into it and really really really like yourself. Be kind, loving and gentle with yourself as you would with any of your loved ones.
You know what I’m talking about don’t you? It’s so easy to fall back into the trap of negative self-talk that we often say things to ourselves that we’d never dream of saying to others. Learning to be nice to yourself is a little like practicing the golden rule in reverse. Instead of doing unto others as you would have them do to you, you need to like yourself enough to do unto yourself as you already do for others.
4. Play to Your Strengths
Playing to your strengths is good for your positive self-talk for a couple of reasons. First, you have to recognize that you have strengths to be able to put them to good use. When you are learning to be self-confident it’s easy to forget that there are actually things you do well, so recognizing your strengths is a good step in the right direction.
Secondly, knowing your strong points and playing them up gives you a firm foundation for overruling your negative voice. If you know what your strengths are and you know how to use them, it’s easy to kick the negative self-talk to the curb because you already have positive experiences to replace it with.
5. Be Real
Above all, be real. Be honest with yourself in your self-talk. The whole point of talking like you like yourself is to grow yourself confidence. If you’re not honest and real with yourself, you are not doing your confidence or your self-esteem any good. Yes, you need to always be positive but there’s a big difference between being positive and feeding yourself a line. The difference is that positive self-talk implies a level of self-belief that you know deep in your heart what you are telling yourself is true.
When it comes to self-confidence and self-esteem, the key word is “self”. Only you can build your own confidence. Others can reinforce what you believe, but if you can’t talk like you like yourself and believe it, then no amount of positive reinforcement from others is going to help. Your ultimate strength comes from within you first, and how you talk to yourself is a good measure of how strong you really think you are. Use these tips to stay focused on the positive. You’ll start to really like yourself before you know it!
Photo Credit: © Erik Reis | Dreamstime.com
