Establish Positive Self-Talk

Yes, we are back! It has been a pretty hectic year for us, and we are sure for everyone, too. We sincerely hope that your 2021 was excitedly packed yet mentally healthy. There are plenty of mental health topics we would love to share, but after a relatively big gap between our last blog and this, we decided to go with a deep-rooted topic - positive self-talk.

Building positive self-talk has always been one of our blog's main themes, but we just never state it as literal as this. Looking back at our previous blog content, we are consistently trying to encourage everyone to appreciate more of who they are, gently embrace yourself, have faith in yourself and be supportive to yourself. These, are in fact branches that tie to the same root: positive self-talk. 

Over this year's experience, I figured that the way you talk to yourself is an essential cornerstone to better mental health. And perhaps the key to breakthrough from the walls that stop you from pursuing what you desire, or the bars that keep you in a loop where things happen again and again because you talk yourself into making the same decision every time you face a similar challenge. It is not the easiest of skills to be mindful of how you talk to yourself, but one that would definitely benefit your upcoming life journey. 

What is Self-Talk?

Self-talk is the internal dialogue we do every day, it helps us organise our thoughts and formulate the next plan of attack (aka making decisions). Some people prefer to think out loud, and it is okay! 

Self-image, confidence, beliefs, worldviews are derived from self-talks. And it affects the surface layer, which are our patterns of behaviour, decisions, motivation.

With or without our conscious awareness, this inner voice can be reassuring and pleasing to your mind and heart, thus lifting you up to being a better self; yet some self-talks might fall into the opposite direction, and eat you out from the inside out. Most of us may be able to think of a time where you are devoured by your own thoughts, which sound a lot like the experience of anxiety. 

Self-talk is a Double-Edged Sword

Now that we know how parted the aftermaths could end up, how can we distinguish the constructive (positive) and destructive (negative) self-talks? Positive self-talks are the encouraging, smoothing, confident ones. We each have a slightly different set of sentences that fit these criteria, but it evolves around: "It's okay", "I am enough", "I can do it", "I am stronger than I think", "It's okay to ask for help", "I deserve some credit", "At least I tried."

On the other hand, negative or destructive self-talks belittle values of things, shut down ideas, and avoidance. It would sound like, "I'm useless", "No one understands me", "My life sucks", "I am not worthy of love", "I can't do it, I'm incapable". Unfortunately, this type of self-talk lures you into thinking less of yourself.

At the end of the day, the notion of The Lights Within is that we believe everyone has the very light we needed deep within, we are a capable therapist to ourselves, we are born with the self-healing superpower. However, negative self-talk tells you otherwise. 

YOU are the Key you are Seeking

Believe it or not, one of the biggest barriers is often built by ourselves. When we don't trust that we can do it, we won't even bother trying. When we do not even believe in ourselves, we usually find values via other people's compliments, we rely on others to build our self-esteem. I'm not saying that talking to people is not right, because having deep conversations with others could help us reflect, especially with certain blind spots. But the point is, something has to be initiated from you yourself. You are the key to changes and growth. Others might assist you in searching the way out, but no one can move you unless you talk yourself into it. That's why the direction "you talk yourself into" has a greater impact compared to others' suggestions and comments. 

Let's try it with a scenario: a person is labelled as "capable", but she doesn't believe it. Then, no matter how many people tell her that she can do it / she has the ability to overcome it, she won't be convinced. 

Scenario 2: a person has been labelled as "incapable" for a long period of time. Yet, she doesn't believe so. When her belief is strong enough, no comments would affect her much. However, if deep down she is being insecure about her capabilities, she might absorb these labels and doubt herself. 

What I'm trying to prove is: it is rooting from your bottom of the heart, it is about what you convince yourself to, you are the one controlling the way you speak to yourself.

NOTICE How You Talk to Yourselves

What if the problem is: I'm not aware of my internal dialogue? Things just happened without my conscious awareness? Like mentioned earlier, being mindful of how we talk to ourselves is not a skill that is mastered overnight, yet, there are many tools out there to help you. One really good example is practising mindfulness, which is a worth-discussing topic we would explore more in the future.

We believe one way to visualise our thoughts is to actually write down your responses to self-reflection questions and analyse your own answer. Here, we have several example self-reflection questions designed for you to access your self-talk pattern, and we sincerely hope it can help:

Of course, many other reflection questions can do the job too, always welcome to go back to our previous mid-year reflection blog. The reflection questions per se are not what matters most, but the answers. Read between the lines, notice the word choice and tone used in your answer, and dig out the underlying attitude and beliefs you are holding. This layer is where you reveal whether your self-talks are constructive or destructive. If you believe your self-talk is relatively negative and you want a change, we hope this blog where we talked about altering our narrative can give you some insights.

We understand the idea we discuss in this blog might be a little bit complex and a lot to take in, but we really believe this is the deep-rooted direction to better mental health. Yes, your self-talk is the key. You, are the key. 

You guard this double-edged sword. Mindful how you use it. And use it wisely. 

Wholeheartedly,

The Lights Within

Related resources:

Positive Self-Talk, by PsychHub, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71_NkXgAK1g&ab_channel=PsychHub

How to stop negative self-talk, by headspace, https://www.headspace.com/mindfulness/stop-negative-self-talk