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Today’s Quick Tips episode is all about taking control of your Negative Self-talk. Cutting off your negative thoughts and replaceing them with positive ones.
If you have any questions, or comments, please leave them in the comments section below.
Podcast music: Is ‘Sweet Life’ by Twisterium.
Music Link: https://www.twisterium.com
Podcast Transcript:
Hello and welcome to episode 21 of the everyday confidence podcast from theskillfulmind.com. I’m your host, Steve George and Today’s quick tip is about controlling your negative thoughts.
And to begin with, there’s a couple things to remember about thoughts…
Firstly, you can’t not think. Even if you believe your mind’s completely clear, you’re still thinking ‘is my mind completely clear?’ There’s always some sort of thought going on, because you have to be thinking something.
And secondly, you can only think one thing at a time. It’s completely impossible to think about two things at the same time. Try it, and you’ll see for yourself!
Anyway, because of that I’m going to give you a quick technique to help you take control again.
So, as soon as you hear your negative self-talk gremlin start talking, shut it down straight away.
Now, the best way to stop a negative thought is choose a STOP word that you can use. And that can be something simple like just saying to yourself, ‘STOP’, or ‘NO’, or anything you like just to break your negative pattern long enough to get the control back.
Then just take a step back and observe what was happening. So, ask yourself questions like… ‘What emotion is it bringing up for me?’, ‘Why am I thinking that particular thought? Where is that thought taking me? Is it helpful?’ ‘Is it even true?’
Now, there might be times where the negative thought pops up while you’re in the middle of doing something important. And if that happens, just stop it with your stop word, then straight away replace the negative thought with a positive one. Because if your thinking a positive thought, a negative one can’t intrude at the same time. And that way, you carry straight on with what you were doing, but without the negative interference.
Then if you feel like it later on, you can remind yourself what that negative thought was and ask yourself the questions I mentioned before.
And lastly, so you don’t get caught without a positive thought to use quickly, have a few of them pre-prepared, like…
‘I’m doing good’, or ‘I’ve got this’, or ‘I’m gonna make this work’, something like that.
And there you have it, a quick repeatable technique to help you get control back.
That’s it for today. All the information and show notes will be over on the podcast page for this episode. So that’s the skillfulmind.com/podcast/21
If you found the podcast helpful, I’d love for you to share it with your friends, and you can do that on the podcast page. If you didn’t like it for some reason, you can always share those thoughts with me. Any feedback’s helpful, so don’t be shy about letting me know what you thought. You can either leave me a comment on the podcast page, or drop me an email at steve@theskillfulmind.com.
Thanks for listening and I’ll speak to you next time. Bye for now.
And to begin with, there’s a couple things to remember about thoughts…
Firstly, you can’t not think. Even if you believe your mind’s completely clear, you’re still thinking ‘is my mind completely clear?’ There’s always some sort of thought going on, because you have to be thinking something.
And secondly, you can only think one thing at a time. It’s completely impossible to think about two things at the same time. Try it, and you’ll see for yourself!
Anyway, because of that I’m going to give you a quick technique to help you take control again.
So, as soon as you hear your negative self-talk gremlin start talking, shut it down straight away.
Now, the best way to stop a negative thought is choose a STOP word that you can use. And that can be something simple like just saying to yourself, ‘STOP’, or ‘NO’, or anything you like just to break your negative pattern long enough to get the control back.
Then just take a step back and observe what was happening. So, ask yourself questions like… ‘What emotion is it bringing up for me?’, ‘Why am I thinking that particular thought? Where is that thought taking me? Is it helpful?’ ‘Is it even true?’
Now, there might be times where the negative thought pops up while you’re in the middle of doing something important. And if that happens, just stop it with your stop word, then straight away replace the negative thought with a positive one. Because if your thinking a positive thought, a negative one can’t intrude at the same time. And that way, you carry straight on with what you were doing, but without the negative interference.
Then if you feel like it later on, you can remind yourself what that negative thought was and ask yourself the questions I mentioned before.
And lastly, so you don’t get caught without a positive thought to use quickly, have a few of them pre-prepared, like…
‘I’m doing good’, or ‘I’ve got this’, or ‘I’m gonna make this work’, something like that.
And there you have it, a quick repeatable technique to help you get control back.
That’s it for today. All the information and show notes will be over on the podcast page for this episode. So that’s the skillfulmind.com/podcast/21
If you found the podcast helpful, I’d love for you to share it with your friends, and you can do that on the podcast page. If you didn’t like it for some reason, you can always share those thoughts with me. Any feedback’s helpful, so don’t be shy about letting me know what you thought. You can either leave me a comment on the podcast page, or drop me an email at steve@theskillfulmind.com.
Thanks for listening and I’ll speak to you next time. Bye for now.
