Do you ever stop and really listen to yourself as you go through your day? We say so many negative things to ourselves, and most of the time we’re not even aware of it. Many of those things don’t even seem particularly important—I never remember people’s names. I’m such a messy cook. I guess I’ll give them a call, but I’m sure they’ll just say no. Things that not only don’t seem too important, but also seem to simply be “the truth” so what’s the harm in speaking the truth?
The problem for many people is that they don’t realize that those things are “true” because they’ve programmed themselves with that negative self-talk, not the other way around. For most of us, the negative programming started early and in most cases was well-intentioned. Our parents wanted us to be safe, our teachers wanted us to pay attention and learn, our coaches wanted us to improve our skills, and our bosses wanted us to do a better job.
Although at times, of course, any of those people might have done been intentionally harsh or cruel, most only thought they were doing what was best for you. But studies have shown that by the time we’re grown, we’ve heard literally tens of thousands of “negative instructions” programming our sub-conscious so that we continue the programming with our own negative self-talk.
But the really amazing thing is that if you can be programmed negatively with all those negative statements, you can also change the programming to be more positive. You can literally re-program yourself and once you’re operating with different programming, you will experience different results. It’s so simple and yet so powerful.
We can change our internal programming. One simple place to start is just listening to how we currently speak to ourselves. Once we become conscious of our self-talk, it’s easier to learn how to change it.
The Positive Thinking Institute 