How To Stop Negative Self-Talk?

A quick guide to a happy mind.

Negative self-talk can be tricky to recognize, you may have been taught to be self-critical from childhood, and childhood beliefs can develop unhealthy behaviors that are hard to recognize and therefore be hard to change. Here are 6 tips on how to stop negative self-talk.

1. Identify the negative thought.
   1. Beliefs come from different sources, learning experiences, childhood, and the people we surround ourselves with. Recognizing a negative thought, it’s the first step to dismantling a system of negativity inside your brain. This journey can feel a bit solitary at times, and it can be very painful for some of you. But after you do the work better things come along. An easy way to recognize negative thoughts is to let your emotions tell you. When you start feeling anxious, angry, hopeless, ugly, or any other bad emotion pay attention to what thought was running through your mind at that precise moment. This is the thought you’ll want to challenge.
2. Challenge the thought.
   1. Give yourself the credit you deserve. When the thought comes back (because it will, it always does) remind yourself of all the reasons why this thought is not true. Discredit its power with proof of what you have accomplished in the past. At times it will be hard to find ways to challenge the thought, in this case, go back to the very basics. There is always something you have accomplished that will discredit the thought.
3. Replace the negative thought with a positive one.
   1. Create a little ‘to go’ list with good thoughts about yourself that you can always quickly access when you’re challenging a stubborn thought or old belief. Sometimes this practice can feel fake, your ego will start to get very uncomfortable from the very beginning of the process of changing the way you speak to yourself. Your ego will fight the new positive replacement thoughts you choose to tell yourself, fight the awkwardness, fight the ego telling you you’re wrong, because your ego has gotten you nowhere, and rewiring your brain is a new opportunity at making something beautiful, something powerful with your life.
4. Reprogram your brain.
   1. The replacement statements will eventually feel natural, that’s when you’ll start noticing your life taking a turn. You will only get to this point by pushing through the last step and practicing the repetition of the new thoughts.
5. Celebrate.
   1. The work you’re doing is not easy and many people go their entire life without even attempting to do anything remotely close to self-development, this is why I can’t stress enough that when you are doing the work of becoming a better person for yourself and others you have to take the time to celebrate every little accomplishment, and every step in the right direction. If you don’t, the most probable thing is that nobody will. So, go ahead, take the time off, visit the place you’ve been thinking about, buy yourself cute shoes, go to the movies by yourself, eat out tonight, anything that will put a good memory linked with your progress. Nobody needs to know (unless you want to), nobody needs to understand. Just your understanding is what you’re looking for.
6. Don’t dwell on every thought you have.
   1. Detach from thoughts faster than usual, try to see them, and pick and choose which thoughts you want to entertain. If we sit there and try to analyze every single thought, we would drive ourselves crazy. Just don’t. let them go, they’re just thoughts and not reality.

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Xo

Hazel