The words we choose for our self-talk play an incredibly important role in influencing and creating our physical reality, but many of us don’t notice how much our self-talk is shaping our perceptions.
Self-talk are the words you use to affirm yourself and your life, sometimes these words are positive, uplifting and supportive, other times they can be negative and detrimental.
One of the most interesting things about the words we choose for self-talk is how we begin our statements, the words are often permanent, for example, “I have no self-confidence.” or “I have a bad back”, these words perpetuate our ongoing perceptions of who and what we are, but often the situations they are describing are only temporary. Your self-talk does not need to indefinitely define you.
If we pay close attention to our self-talk, we can begin to notice how often we use a negative aspect and turn it into a permanent situation, particularly if we experienced something that had a negative effect on us one time, we tend to generalise and make it a permanent thing. For example, we’ve all over exerted ourselves doing something new, maybe exercise, gardening, DIY, etc. and then the next day felt aches and pains in our body, but how often has that temporary sensation led to a permanent statement such as “I can’t do gardening, I have a bad back.”
We also use non-physical experiences and sensations for our self-talk too, for example, if a situation makes you feel nervous or anxious, it is only temporary and it doesn’t mean it will happen every time you are in that situation, the nerves and anxiety are not who you are, but all too often we use self-talk to make it permanent, for example, “I can’t go for that new job, I’m too nervous, I’m not good enough.”
The words we chose for self-talk dramatically affect our perception of who we are and what we create in our reality.
A little exercise to illustrate this is simply to observe your self-talk for a few days and each time you hear yourself ask “Is this really true for me?” Ask yourself if your self-talk has created your reality. Ask yourself if your words should be a temporary statement rather than a permanent statement, or see if you can change the words completely to be a strong positive statement and have the opposite effect.
What we tell ourselves often enough becomes our reality.
