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ALL IN THE MIND: Your attitude is the key to achieving goals and
experiencing success

SELF TALK is the dialogue or ‘inner chatter' that plays out in our mind. Whether it's positive self-talk or negative self-talk, this is a behaviour that is ever-present in all our lives. We all talk to ourselves constantly throughout the day.

Everything that goes on in our life is usually accompanied by our own ‘running commentary'. The problem is however, that much of our self-talk is of a negative nature. It is often tainted with regrets and disappointments about our past, and fears and doubts about our future.

This negative inner dialogue not only affects the way we feel, but it also affects the way we act. All our actions are influenced by our thoughts. If our thoughts are positive and uplifting, then this leads us to taking more positive and inspired actions.

If they are filled with pessimism and resistance then our actions will often be lacklustre and unproductive. By changing the way we think it will in turn change the way we act. Practicing positive self talk is a very powerful way of ridding our minds of negativity and replacing it with thoughts that will empower us to take more rewarding and inspiring actions.

There are many positive self talk activities that one can follow to help remove negativity from your mind.

Here are just five tips to help creating more powerful and inspiring self talk...

1. Become aware and acknowledge

Before you can begin to develop more positive thinking in your life, you must first become aware of and acknowledge that you are having negative thoughts in the first place. Once you do this, you can then take the necessary actions to eradicate it from your life. Unfortunately, self talk is often such an habitual behaviour, most people go through life totally oblivious to the negative thoughts and dialogue that consistently run through their heads.

2. Try reasoning with your thoughts

When you catch yourself talking negatively to yourself, try and give reason and logic to why you are doing this. Is there any evidence that really justifies my negative thoughts? Am I losing perspective of the situation? Are there any positives that can come out of this situation? Am I really benefiting from wasting a lot of energy thinking about it?

3. Erase and replace

Every time you become aware you are having a negative thought try and erase it from your mind immediately and replace it with a positive self talk statement. For example, when you hear yourself saying 'I can't do this task... I'm just not good enough', change it by saying something like 'I'm going to confront this challenge head on, and do it to the best of my ability'.

4. Positive affirmations

I've talked about the power and effectiveness of affirmations in many of my previous articles. Positive self talk affirmations are very powerful in changing your consistent thoughts and beliefs. Repeating positive affirmations on a daily basis will result in your subconscious mind being reprogrammed with new positive thoughts and inspiring beliefs.

When this happens, the universe will open up a whole array of exciting opportunities, experiences and conditions that will inevitably improve your life. Some examples of positive affirmations are:

• I am becoming better everyday
• I deserve to be happy
• I have faith and deep belief in myself
• I have strong faith in my ability to succeed
• I love challenges and embrace them

5. Remove negative influences from your life

Being around people who are constantly negative will greatly affect your energy and dramatically impact your positivity and happiness. You must become aware of those negative influences, and either limit your exposure to them as much as you can or even eliminate them from your life completely.

Instead, surround yourself with people who radiate positive energy and who will empower you to succeed in every aspect of your life. Replacing negative self talk with positivity is something that will not happen quickly. Ingrained self-sabotaging beliefs that are a result of years of habitual negative thinking will take some time and ef- fort before they are removed completely.

But fear not. If you diligently follow the above positive self talk tips, you will start to experience major improvements in your life. Self talk is something we all do every day. The things we consistently say to ourselves has a significant impact on our attitude towards life.

A positive attitude is the key to achieving goals and experiencing success.

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