Growing up you may have heard your mother say to you, as I did, “If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all”. As I remember it, this quote was mostly directed at my brother 🙂  just kidding – either my brother or I during one of our wrestling bouts when we were kids. “Wait till your Father gets home” was another of my Mother’s sayings, but that’s a whole other post :). Anyway, back to – saying something nice. Although it was intended regarding my action towards other people, I think you will agree that sometimes we say some not so nice things to ourselves that we wouldn’t dream of saying to someone else. Very often we sabotage our dreams and success by not only what we tell ourselves, but even worse, by actually verbalizing it! Proverbs 6 says: “You are trapped by the words of your mouth. And You are ensnared with the words of your mouth.” I have heard it said that the Bible is antiquated and can’t be applied to our lives today. But I have found that the more I study it, the more I find simple truths like this one. I also frequently find these truths reinforced by great motivators like Les Brown, who have risen from despair, and who said: “Life has no limitations, except the ones you make.”

So how do we change it? We have to change what we say to ourselves and especially what we say aloud even if it is under our breath. If you want a formula, you only need to look to Olympic Medal winners? Clearly, everyone is aware of the reality that only one person gets the Gold Medal. But the top athletes look past that reality, in training, and before the big event. The truly great athletes know they may have missteps, but they only focus on the present and use positive self-talk to get through it. The winners will tell you that a large percent of their event was mental and although there was great physical preparation, if they had not prepared mentally, with affirming positive self-talk, they would not have won. Now we might not be competing for the Gold, but how many times do we negatively self-talk ourselves out of something. Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly talking to ourselves. If we are saying things like, “I am terrible at……..” or, “why did you just do that, what’s wrong with you?”, or “Who am I kidding….I can’t do that”, we have to change that and do what athletes and other successful people do. We have to focus on our past successes and change those statements to something positive. Want some help? You can click here and listen to Motivator, Les Brown, give you some advice for exchanging those negative statements for positive ones.

What techniques do you use to be more positive and not listen to the negative self  talk? Tell me know below.