How to Quit Negative Self Talk
Do you ever struggle with negative self talk? I’m pretty sure everyone has at some point. I’ve been fighting my own negative thoughts lately so in this video ill share how to quit I figured this was the best time to share how to quit negative self talk.
Here’s the video if you’d like to watch how I created this quote in my Creatively Confident video:
When things aren’t going the way you hoped, it’s really easy to start feeling like it’s because you aren’t good enough. That’s not true at all. Sometimes we just have to keep working at something until it finally works. But when we’re in the middle of it and we start thinking negative thoughts, we get into a cycle. We put ourselves down, which makes us feel worse, so we put ourselves down even more. So how do we break this cycle? I’ve been in this cycle a few too many times. I’m going to share a little about my most recent experience and what I learned about breaking this negative self talk cycle.
The first thing is to realize that you are in the negative self talk cycle. This seems easy enough, but it’s not. When we are so negative about ourselves consistently, we start to believe that the things we think are true. I start telling my husband how I’m feeling and of course he tells me I’m being ridiculous when I say something like, “Everything I do fails” and “I suck at everything.” It seems crazy now, but last week, those things actually came out of my mouth. When I say it out loud, I realize that it does sound ridiculous. Realizing this is a good start, but it doesn’t make us stop feeling it.
We need to replace those negative thoughts. I was told that for every negative thought we have about ourselves, we have to replace it with three positive thoughts. This is a great practice because it can remind us of our good qualities. This is also good because as good as it feels to receive compliments, we aren’t going to believe them until we feel them, and can come up with them ourselves.
It can be really important to share how you’re feeling with a close friend or family member, but I think we need to be careful about fishing for validation on social media too early. Last week, I started feeling really negative so for a day, I stayed off of Instagram. I know I could have shared how I was feeling and I would have gotten tons of messages reminding me that I was doing great. I appreciate that, and it definitely has a place, but like I said, you won’t believe it if you can’t feel it yourself. No matter how much good other people say about you, at the end of the day, you’re still just you and your thoughts. This is why we have to learn how to build ourselves up.
The most important compliment you’ll ever get comes from yourself. I’m not saying that it doesn’t feel good to get validated by others. We definitely need that too. But we can’t always count on Instagram or other social media to lift us up every time we get down.
So I spent the day helping myself to feel good. I got dressed in my favorite clothes, I curled my hair and did my makeup because I don’t do that often. I spent a little time with myself and I remembered some pretty great things that I love about myself. After this, I was ready to keep working on the project that didn’t seem to be going right. I got on Instagram and I was able to share my struggle, but in a more positive way, hoping to encourage anyone else who was feeling like me, to just keep going. After sharing, I did get a lot of messages from sweet friends and followers building me up. I appreciated every message, and I could actually believe what they were telling me, because I had taken the time to love myself first.
It’s time to break the negative self talk cycle. Try complimenting yourself a little more. You may be surprised how good it feels to be validated by yourself. We can’t choose what happens to us or what people say about us, but we can choose what we think about ourselves. Let’s quit negative self talk.
Now I want to hear from you! What do you do to overcome negative self talk?
