Joe Tye offers us the following 7 Steps for Reprogramming Negative Self-Talk (Spark Plug).
- Nothing can sap your effective leadership than your own negative self-talk (internal dialog) so your challenge is to confront these self inhibiting notions before they interfere with your leadership
- Catalog by paying attention to all your negative self-talk.
- What do you say to yourself on your way home after work-is it what when right today or is it all the things you didn't get done
- Most of it will be in the second person such as “You idiot” “ You are not good enough to be a leader”, “I’ll never be good at leading” ,etc.
- Chances are you allow your own inner critic to speak to you in abusive ways that you would never tolerate from anyone else
- For a short time keep notes of what you are saying to yourself
- Identify where it has come from
- It is usually a voice from the distant past that has metastasize into something far more critical than was the original intention of the speaker perhaps from a teacher or parent
- Being able to identify where it came from goes a long way to appreciating that it is no longer true and takes the emotion out of it
- Pay attention to what your are telling yourself
- So that new inner lies can be confronted immediately before they take root
- Ask yourself is this a one time situation and not all the time so you put it in perspective such as “I just had a bad day”, “I won’t do that again”
- Re-label to offset its pernicious influence by thinking of it as graffiti being spray painted on the walls of your mind such as “As there I go again berating myself”,
- Erase by creating a mental janitor who comes along and paints over it so it is no longer there.
- Acknowledge the learning and let it go
- Replace once it is painted over state the opposite to yourself along with a positive affirmation such as “I’m a winner and I keep chugging when the going gets tough” being sure it is in the first person
- It’s the difference between an ancient lie and a truth of today
- Repeat as it takes repetition to override harmful old mental circuits and replace them with positive new ones
- See the Self Talk AJHP Success Skill I published
On your trip home after work today challenge yourself to think about at least one good thing that happened during the day and tomorrow pay attention to what you are saying to yourself.