To be completely honest with you, I'm typically one of those people who thinks positive self-talk is a goofy concept. I feel silly telling myself "I'm a good person, I have a great product..." etc. etc. What typically runs through my mind when I think about self-talk is the old Saturday Night Live skit: "Gosh darn it, people LIKE me!" However, in the past few months, and especially in the past few days, I've been confronted multiple times with the reality of just how dramatically your thoughts CAN affect the course of your day. Our outlook, attitude and motivation all fall prey to the things we feed our brain. If I beat myself up for a mistake or doubt the quality of the services we provide to companies or tell myself how hard it is going to be to hit my goals, my brain concentrates on those negative thoughts and my behavior and attitude completely reflect that negativity. And what I've noticed recently is that it creates a snowball effect: you start thinking negatively about one thing and pretty soon everything in your life looks bleek and you have a sour attitude about everything.
The good news is that the flip side works just as powerfully. If you concentrate on thinking positively and having positive self-talk, your attitude responds in kind. The proverbial "elephant" doesn't look so big and your motivation and determination climb to new levels.
So my challenge to you is to give an honest listen to what you are saying- both internally and out loud. Make a concentrated effort to enforce POSITIVE self-talk. Turns out it isn't as goofy as I thought...
Elizabeth Heil, ReachMore Strategies, elizabeth@goreachmore.com
