Positive Self-Talk with Sally Love

Have you ever thought about how much time you spend talking to yourself? I don't mean talking out loud to yourself. We certainly don't go around doing that much because people would think we are crazy! What I’m talking about is the internal dialogue that is constantly going on in your head. 

Think for a minute about some of the things you have said to yourself recently - are they positive or negative?

Health experts have this to say:

• Positive thinking may increase our life span by several years. 

• Positive thinking and positive self-talk can lower stress. 

• Positive thinking increases our ability to successfully deal with stressful situations. 

• Positive thinking may provide greater resistance to the common cold.

• Positive thinking can improve our cardiovascular health.

To me, those are all great benefits. And even if we didn’t have those benefits, positive self-talk certainly improves our mood, our confidence and our performance.

Would you like to improve your performance? Of course you would!  

Two of my grandsons have played baseball for a long time. We are a baseball family. They each started out in Little League, played for their school teams and also play competitively in travel ball. Both of them are pitchers. What if they walked up on the pitcher's mound and talked to themselves with negative self-talk? Saying something like "I'm a lousy pitcher" or "I just can't do this" or "I'm never going to amount to much at baseball." Do you think that's the way they talk to themselves? Of course not!

Is that the way the professional baseball players we see on television talk to themselves? Of course not!  Then, why should we talk to ourselves that way?  We shouldn't!

Athletes routinely use positive thinking and positive self-talk to improve their performance. You and I should too! We need to have the right conversations with ourselves. If you find yourself thinking a negative thought, today is the day to turn it around and make it positive, no matter how small it is. And then build on it each day. 

What else can we do to increase our positive self-talk? We can surround ourselves with positive people. I don't know about you, but I just do not have the time, patience or energy to be around negative people. When I hear people talking negatively, or putting themselves down I just want to get away from them! 

I want you to think about the people you’re leading. Does your team or supervisor want to hear you using negative self-talk? Nope. Does your company appreciate you talking negatively about your role in the company? No, they do not. 

It’s important to know that we tend to gravitate towards people who are like ourselves. So, if you are a positive person, seeing the glass as half-full and you use positive self talk, you are probably surrounded by many other positive people. 

Likewise, when people engage in negative self-talk and negative thinking, they’re like a magnet. They’re usually surrounded by other negative thinking people. They enjoy having a pity party so they attract other people that want to join in on that pity party. You've been around those people. You may even have someone on your team right now like that. Watch out! Because negative self-talk is not the way to improve performance and achieve a high level of performance - whether individually or for your team. Positive self-talk is!

I encourage you to keep weaving positive thoughts into the conversations you have with yourself and with others. Positive thinking and positive self-talk are what will build you up and propel you to the next level of performance.