Even if you don’t realize it, you talk to yourself about yourself all day, every day. Are you even aware of what you’re saying to yourself? Most of us aren’t. Our thoughts about ourselves are usually on autopilot.

Do you know that a National Science Foundation study found that most of us have between 60-80 THOUSAND individual thoughts per day and that up to 80% of them are negative and up to 95% of those are repetitive, according to TopMentalGame.com.

Take a minute and think about something you REALLY want to do. What keeps you from doing it? A lot of answers will be time or money. But if we dig deeper, the real answer would be we don’t think we could do it. That if we tried, we would fail. Because if we really wanted to do it, nothing would stand in our way.

It’s like the famous quote from Jim Rohn, “If you really want to do something you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.”

How often do you encourage yourself compared to how many times have you put yourself down for not being perfect enough instead of celebrating the fact that at least you tried? Try to keep in mind that when you try and fail you can learn from that failure about what worked and what didn’t, and try another way. Failure is not a reason to quit on yourself.

Many of us don’t even know where to start to have better self-talk because of our upbringing. We were told “no” more than “yes” or put down more often than we were lifted up and now the burden of success is on us. It starts with working on ourselves to overcome what has been ingrained in us from the beginning of our lives and often hammered home by adult relationships whether personal or professional.

You CAN change it. But you have to do the work. Will it be easy? Probably not. Will it be worth it? Most definitely. If you want to change your life you have to change the way you think about yourself. And it’s not as hard as you think.

Start this week by making a list of your best personal qualities. Try to get at least 10 of them. For some of us, even that step is hard. If you’re struggling to come up with anything then ask someone you trust to help you out.

Once you have those positive words to describe you, pick the one that resonates the most with you and focus on it every day. What you focus on, grows. Each day try to keep track of how often you think positively or negatively about yourself. You can even keep a running tally on your phone or a slip of paper. And as you focus on your greatest positive attribute, see how that tally changes. Next week, pick a new positive word and add it to your prior focus word and keep it growing each week.

Inner work and changing the way we think about ourselves can be hard. You have to be intentional. But before you can add value to others you need to know how valuable you are. And trust me when I tell you that you are valuable.

I want to encourage you to make a difference in your own life. I’ve got your back.

#selftalk #positive #innerwork #healingjourney