What is "self-talk"? Part 4

The thing is that when it comes to self-talk, it can take the shape of a dialogue rather than a monologue. It doesn’t have to. But it can. I believe it should. Because the negative voice inside ourselves does not have to have the only say. It can be challenged. And what I am beginning to realize, is that often we have a choice. A choice between bringing ourselves down or up. Between talking to ourselves in a condemning or forgiving way. Between showing compassion or hardness towards ourselves. Between trusting and distrusting ourselves and our abilities. 

And how we talk to ourselves may determine how we feel inside and whether we succeed or fail.

What is "self-talk"? Part 3

In relation to a certain situation recently, I caught myself saying to myself that I was basically a selfish, immoral idiot, with a behavior that was utterly transparent to anyone but myself. But then I realized that I knew nothing of what other people saw in my behavior, that if I wasn’t transparent to myself, it’s not certain that I am to other, that I didn’t take the issue at hand lightly and that I, admittedly hesitating, had actually chosen something good. 

If you look carefully at the former paragraph, you will see that not only are there two completely different perspectives in it. But they are also equally true, apart from the part of what others perceive and think. And what others perceive and think I can know nothing about unless I ask them. But if I stick with only the first perspective, while ignoring the second, it is very likely that it will make me like myself less. 

What is "self-talk"? Part 2

I believe all people are more or less conscious of their self-talk all of their lives. But it was not until I got the aha-moment that lead to this blog post, that I started thinking of what it actually is, and how to separate it from the other thoughts that go on inside my head. 

Basically, the thoughts that place a value judgment on what I do and who I am can be labelled “self-talk”. At its most basic form, self-talk is about judging what I do, say and who I am as good or bad. It entails whether I show compassion or condemnation when I make mistakes. And whether I let successes boost my authentic confidence or whether I let them blow up my ego. 

What is "self-talk"? Part 1

This is a post about that little monologue that goes on constantly in our heads and how there are different aspect of it. One of these aspects is the way we talk to ourselves.

I’ve been familiar with the term “self-talk” for quite some time. I can’t really remember if I first heard it two or twenty years ago though. As with so many other terms, it does mean something that is worth reflecting on, because it can enrich our lives. But until now, I haven’t done so.

Every fall CAN be a fall forward

Some spiritual teachers say that we always fall forward. Another saying is also that life happens for us and not to us.

I believe that these two statements go together. I’ve also come to believe that the second statement is always true, while the former only is true if we make it true. And in a sense, we have to make the second statement true as well.

What do I mean by this? Well, it all depends on how we process it on the inside. If we choose to just resist our hardships and not learn anything from them, it will feel as if life is happening to us and a fall will just be a fall. Maybe in the grander scheme of things, everything that happens, including total defeat and death, is a learning experience. But if we don’t want to wait until after death to see if our failures might have taught us something, we need to start paying attention to how we process things.

The day before writing this I had a fall. It’s of a personal nature, that is not suited for this blog. At least not at this point. 

I’ve fallen in this way before. But something interesting happened. I didn’t fall as hard as the last time. And it made me realize that I have to deal with my stress. That I need to take care of myself in more ways than just working out, meditating and eating healthy. But there will be a separate post on this. 

What I want to get at, is that there is a lesson in all of our experiences. Even the ones that we and our lack of character are the causes of. It’s so easy to get into negative self-talk, with thoughts like: “I’m hopeless”, “now I’m back at square one”, “I’ll never take control of my life” and “I’ll never amount to anything”.

But this is very limited thinking. And that’s all it is. Thinking. We can change our thinking by choosing whether we want to believe our thoughts. And when we understand this, it also becomes easier to choose our thoughts.

For one, our “bad” behavior is never the whole truth about ourselves. If we take a step back and observe our thoughts, we can see that we convince ourselves of all kinds of stuff that we regret later.

But if we instead resist what is happening, explain things away and refuse to learn anything, we will likely just get more and more lessons, until we get a lesson that destroys us. In most cases it’s unlikely that things go this far since the lessons become clearer and clearer. But we can make it more and more difficult for ourselves. 

The real big things happen on the inside, when we choose to take to heart what God is trying to teach us. Because often it is quite obvious what we need to do to make things work better, whether it concerns our relationships, careers, finances or something else. We just don't want to be humble or uncomfortable enough to actually do it.

And depending on how we process things in our minds, we will either fall backward or forward. Depending on how we process things, we will either take control or let life happen to us. And paradoxical enough, real control begins with us letting go and trusting God. Because as long as we let the ego take charge, we haven’t learned the biggest lesson yet.

This is something that I still struggle with by the way.