Self talk

What is self-talk?

Self-talk is something everyone does. Self-talk is those thoughts we have about ourselves and our lives. These thoughts can have a direct effect on our mental health, which can be good or bad depending on what these thoughts are.

Positive or negative thoughts?

You can have positive or negative thoughts about yourself and your life that can affect how you are feeling, your confidence and self-esteem.

For example, you might compare yourself to people at school and tell yourself that you’ll never be as ‘cool’ or ‘popular’ as them. This may lead to you thinking you are not good enough to talk to those people and feeling insecure around them. This is definitely negative self-talk because you are being hard on yourself and thinking this way will stop you from seeing your good points and stop you being as successful as you can possibly be.

Think about the people you know. Doesn't it seem like the people who expect to get good marks at school, play well in Saturday's footy match or have a great time at the party on the weekend always seem to, and the people who expect to fail at things always seem to fail? Even doctors agree that patients usually heal as quickly or as slowly as they (the patients) expect to. It seems that if you keep repeating certain thoughts about yourself often enough, you can end up believing that they are true. Like anything, thoughts can become habits and these can be hard to break. So if your self-talk is always down on yourself it might be hard to believe the good things about yourself.

Be your own best friend

If another person told you that you were fat, ugly or stupid every time you saw them not only would you dislike this person greatly and not want them around but also you would start to believe them. It’s exactly the same with self-talk. You need to treat yourself the way you would treat your best friend. A best friend would always be supportive and talk to you in a positive way. As a result they make you feel good about yourself and want to spend time with them.

How to turn negative self-talk positive

There are times in our lives when things are rotten or tough and it is difficult not to get down on ourselves, especially when other people have said negative things to us along the way. And when one thing goes wrong in one area of our lives it easy to start to think that everything is wrong in our lives.

Our thoughts can start to race, we blame ourselves and say things like "how could I be so stupid," "I'm hopeless," "I can’t do this" etc. and we can feel bad about everything. In these times of negative self-talk, we need to calm ourselves down, stop for a minute and check out the way that we are talking to ourselves.

You can ask yourself these kinds of questions to check your self-talk.

• Am I focusing on my weaknesses and forgetting what I am good at and what is good about me?
• Am I making things seem worse or bigger than they really are?
• Am I being too hard on myself?
• Am I being realistic?
• What can I say to myself that is more encouraging?

Positive affirmations

In the book "Being Happy" Andrew Matthews shows how positive affirmations can help. If you repeat the same thing to yourself enough times you will start to believe it. So why not try repeating something positive to yourself such as "I can do this," "I am smart," or more specifically "I will get great marks at school." Of course you will still need to study and try your best, sorry guys, positive affirmations are not that strong on their own. They are not an instant miracle thing, but study, effort AND confidence will make you that much more likely to succeed.

So next time you’re worried about things try using a positive thought to help encourage yourself, maybe even try writing it down or saying it out loud, it will stick in your mind and eventually have a positive effect on your feelings too.

Negative thoughts?

When you are having lots of negative thoughts about yourself or about what's happening in your life it is sometimes hard not to put your own spin on things and think things are different and worse than how they really are. It's a good idea to get someone else's opinion. Talking with someone you trust and respect can help you work out what is real and to get a more positive and realistic view of yourself and what is happening.

Positive self talk

Positive self-talk helps you calm yourself down, feel more confident, and see things in perspective, but most importantly it helps to build a positive, supportive relationship with yourself. This is important to have so you can build good relationships with others and get what you want out of life.

AND REMEMBER…POSITIVE MINDS ATTRACT

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