How To Counter Negative Self Talk
Original Post from: MindBodyGreen.com
Most of the time, the mean things we say to ourselves aren’t actually helpful—and yet we say them anyways. Wouldn’t our days be a little happier if we stopped bullying ourselves? If you struggle with negative self-talk, here are some tips for becoming nicer to yourself.
What is negative self-talk and why do we do it?
You know that voice in your head that criticizes you and feeds you a stream of mean information about yourself? That’s negative self-talk. While being self-aware is usually considered to be a good thing, overactive self-criticism isn’t very productive (or pleasant) when we’re going about our lives.
It takes practice to counter negative self-talk with more positive thinking, according to Jennifer Mulholland and Jeff Shuck, co-authors of the recently published book, “Leading With Light: Choosing Conscious Leadership When You’re Ready for More.”
“We are thinking beings, so thinking happens whether we like it or not,” Mulholland says. “That inner critic, at stages of our lives, can be a lot louder than we want it to be.”
Negative thinking can become a habit, especially if we learned to criticize ourselves as a coping mechanism or through our upbringing, Mulholland added.
While we don’t have control over the thousands of thoughts that pop into our brain over the course of a day, we can work on changing how we respond to our negative thoughts, whether we act on them, and eventually gain new perspectives that challenge negative thought patterns.
How to be nicer to yourself
1. Put negative thoughts into perspective
“Just think positively” is so easy to say… and nearly impossible to do.
However, you can work on questioning negative thoughts. When you have a negative thought about yourself, such as “I’m not a good friend,” try to counter your negative thought with positive evidence. For example: I am a good friend because I listen to my friends and try to help them with their problems.
Our lives, and the world, will always be full of both good and bad things. Nothing is ever perfect, but most things are never entirely terrible either.
Balancing negative thoughts with positive thoughts isn’t just helpful—it often leads you closer to the truth.
“Shift your focus to be in gratitude: for your breath, for your body, or your home, for your children, for nature, for something that catches your eye in that moment,” Mulholland says.
2. Ask yourself: How is this thought serving me?
Try to become aware of negative thought spirals while they’re occurring and interrogate them — Why am I thinking this? Who influenced this? What does this serve me? Who benefits from this thought train?
“Just that awareness is so helpful because whatever we are bringing our attention to, we are feeding,” Mulholland says.
Sometimes, we seek validation for our negative thoughts, according to Mulholland.
“Having awareness that actually we’re in control is a huge piece of changing our experiences and circumstances, because a lot of it comes from how we are digesting our thoughts,” Mulholland says.
3. Try making a resolution
People often vow to give up unhealthy behaviors, such as binge drinking alcohol, eating too much junk food, or scrolling mindlessly on social media. Why not treat worrying the same way?
Most of the time, the mean things we say to ourselves aren’t actually helpful—and yet we say them anyways. Wouldn’t our days be a little happier if we stopped bullying ourselves? If you struggle with negative self-talk, here are some tips for becoming nicer to yourself.
What is negative self-talk and why do we do it?
You know that voice in your head that criticizes you and feeds you a stream of mean information about yourself? That’s negative self-talk. While being self-aware is usually considered to be a good thing, overactive self-criticism isn’t very productive (or pleasant) when we’re going about our lives.
It takes practice to counter negative self-talk with more positive thinking, according to Jennifer Mulholland and Jeff Shuck, co-authors of the recently published book, “Leading With Light: Choosing Conscious Leadership When You’re Ready for More.”
“We are thinking beings, so thinking happens whether we like it or not,” Mulholland says. “That inner critic, at stages of our lives, can be a lot louder than we want it to be.”
Negative thinking can become a habit, especially if we learned to criticize ourselves as a coping mechanism or through our upbringing, Mulholland added.
While we don’t have control over the thousands of thoughts that pop into our brain over the course of a day, we can work on changing how we respond to our negative thoughts, whether we act on them, and eventually gain new perspectives that challenge negative thought patterns.
How to be nicer to yourself
1. Put negative thoughts into perspective
“Just think positively” is so easy to say… and nearly impossible to do.
However, you can work on questioning negative thoughts. When you have a negative thought about yourself, such as “I’m not a good friend,” try to counter your negative thought with positive evidence. For example: I am a good friend because I listen to my friends and try to help them with their problems.
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Our lives, and the world, will always be full of both good and bad things. Nothing is ever perfect, but most things are never entirely terrible either.
Balancing negative thoughts with positive thoughts isn’t just helpful—it often leads you closer to the truth.
“Shift your focus to be in gratitude: for your breath, for your body, or your home, for your children, for nature, for something that catches your eye in that moment,” Mulholland says.
2. Ask yourself: How is this thought serving me?
Try to become aware of negative thought spirals while they’re occurring and interrogate them — Why am I thinking this? Who influenced this? What does this serve me? Who benefits from this thought train?
“Just that awareness is so helpful because whatever we are bringing our attention to, we are feeding,” Mulholland says.
Sometimes, we seek validation for our negative thoughts, according to Mulholland.
“Having awareness that actually we’re in control is a huge piece of changing our experiences and circumstances, because a lot of it comes from how we are digesting our thoughts,” Mulholland says.
3. Try making a resolution
People often vow to give up unhealthy behaviors, such as binge drinking alcohol, eating too much junk food, or scrolling mindlessly on social media. Why not treat worrying the same way?
“While other people are trying to work out more or give up alcohol, say like, ‘I’m gonna give up worrying,'” Shuck says. “When you frame it in that way, at least for me, it was like, ‘Wow, I see how addicted I am to worry. I see how how addicted I am to negative thinking.’ It’s a tool I pick up when I’m bored, or it’s a tool I pick up when I’m driving home from work, and I don’t know how to manage the problems.”Your worrisome problems won’t go away because you think about them less frequently, but worrying about them all the time isn’t going to make them disappear, either.
Shuck says aiming to give up worry can be a “powerful” step one to challenging negative thoughts.”That doesn’t mean I [can] change the world around me. I start by changing what I think about the world around me,” Shuck says.4. Leave it alone — literallyWhen you find yourself caught up in a tornado of negative thought, changing your surroundings can help you break the momentum.Try going for a mindfulness walk, during which you pay close attention to your setting. For example, tune into your five senses: What do you smell? What do you see? Hear? Feel? Taste? Redirecting your thoughts to something else can help you break out of a negative cycle, plus being outside might help you gain perspective that the mountain you’re worrying about is, in fact, a molehill.
4. Leave it alone — literally
When you find yourself caught up in a tornado of negative thought, changing your surroundings can help you break the momentum.
Try going for a mindfulness walk, during which you pay close attention to your setting. For example, tune into your five senses: What do you smell? What do you see? Hear? Feel? Taste? Redirecting your thoughts to something else can help you break out of a negative cycle, plus being outside might help you gain perspective that the mountain you’re worrying about is, in fact, a molehill.
“The moment we recognize we’re having negative self-talk, it’s almost like we could put that on the shelf for a bit and change our focus to something that we’re grateful for in the moment,” Mulholland says. “Noticing a simple thing that you have to be grateful for just takes your mind off the thing that is pulling you down.”
5. Remember no one benefits when you minimize yourself
No one benefits from our arrogance, Shuck says, but no one wins when we “minimize ourselves” either.
“The world doesn’t benefit when we think less of ourselves. We’re not saying everyone needs to think of themselves first, we’re saying you’re thinking less of yourself doesn’t create more for anyone,” Shuck says. “Unless we can find a way to have to talk to ourselves like we would talk to the people we love in our life, how are we going to make a difference in the people around us?”
6. Give yourself grace on bad days
Some days are just difficult. It’s okay to slow down and give yourself some grace and space to feel down, Mulholland says.
“If your kid was sick or your lover was sick, you would tend to them with more gentleness and help them slow down. That’s what our thinking needs,” Mulholland says.
The takeaway
If you find yourself stuck in a pattern of negative self-talk, try to break the momentum by countering the thoughts with positive evidence, or interrogating the thought’s origins. Remember that some days won’t be perfect—but you can take care of yourself anyways.
