Stop for a moment and think about the person in your life that you spend the most time with.
No, it’s not your spouse, or friends, or coworkers, or your kids. It’s you! Have you ever thought about the fact that the person you spend the most time with is yourself? If it’s true that you will become like the 5 closest people to you, have you ever thought about what kind of influence you have on yourself? Do you want to become like the thoughts you have about yourself? Do you say nice things about yourself to yourself?
Positive self talk is so important. You have to tell yourself what to think! People often wonder why they lack confidence or why they never seem to follow through with what they say they are going to do. A huge reason for this is that we are destroying ourselves from the inside out. We are telling ourselves that we aren’t capable, that we don’t deserve success, that we are unaccountable, that nobody will listen to what I have to say anyway, and the list could go on and on.
But the fact is that these things are not true about you! You are capable, you can do things well, you do have something important to say. So, what is holding you back? Why is it so hard to believe these positive things about yourself? I believe it comes down to the thoughts you tell yourself about yourself. And the best way to change the thoughts you have about yourself is to begin to intentionally feed your mind positive thoughts.
On average people have 12 000 to 60 000 thoughts a day. The brain is capable of so much! Of course, not all these thoughts are about ourselves, but if even a fraction of them are and we trained our brains to speak positively about ourselves, how powerful could that be for our self image?! So how do we go about training our brains to think more positively about ourselves? I could give you a list of tips such as having positive affirmations, or cutting out negative input from your life, but I think more important is for you to figure out where your identity comes from. Your identity is the foundation to the thoughts you say to yourself about who you believe you are.
Does your identity come from what other people think about you? Does it come from what you have or have not accomplished? Where your identity comes from is so important. If it is based on other people or on circumstances and accomplishments, then your emotions are going to play a huge role in your identity. If you base your identity on what other people say about you and what they say is negative, then you will have a negative view of yourself. If your identity is based on what you accomplish in your day, then if you have a bad day, you will have a negative view of yourself.
Instead, you need to pre-determine what your identity is, rather than base it on things that can change. So, tell yourself what kind of person you want to be, what kind of character you want to have, what kind of legacy you want to leave. Spend some time thinking and reflecting about who you want to become and how you want to be remembered. This will help you set the foundation of who you are. Then you can move forward with a positive intention in the thoughts you have about yourself. You have to feed your mind positivity; you have to tell yourself how amazing you are. Feed yourself the mindset you want to have and one day that will be your mindset!
Alexandra Perez – Chief Leadership Advocate – The Leader Co. Inc.