How to overcome negative self-talk …

Have you ever realised making yourself smaller than you actually are? Are you aware when you are telling others or yourself that you probably will fail on something, just so that nobody is surprised you actually failed on something that was important to you? If yes and you belong to the large group of people that are often times thinking about what others think about them, I might have something useful for you. If not – kudos to you. You don’t need to continue reading.

As I promised in my last post on the findyourflow.at social media pages, I want to give you some guidance about how to overcome negative self-talk today.

Let us imagine a group of people meeting up and for whatever reason it comes down to singing. Maybe someone is celebrating his or hers birthday, or you find yourself in the middle of a party where your favourite song is playing, maybe it is even a karaoke party and your friends are pushing you to perform your favourite song. Many people love music, but not so many are professional singers, right? So if one starts singing or accompanying a song, it usually does not sound close to the original (what a surprise!!!) or at least not very well.

So people often times would think they would embarrass themselves on stage, which makes them afraid. Why? Because many of us are not aware about their strengths and therefore covering their true selves and their weaknesses. Not being aware about your strengths (that everyone has) most of the time results in a low feeling of self-value. So if you think about yourself not being that worthy, you are telling yourself you are not enough to fit in and belong to a group. This activates your survival brain and you then will act out of a state of fear. People then try to cover their weaknesses for not losing the rest of significance they think they have (remember – this is hypothetical and just your own minds negative theory about yourself. We all are human individuals worthy of love just because we exist!) Because one does not feel loved, he forces to feel significant to be liked and accepted by others in order to fit in.

To cover qualities, they might not have. Some also want to seem just perfect. Perfectionism anyways can be a very destructive habit for your mental health. Perfectionism does not exist – no matter how positive you think this attitude will be, it won’t serve you (and might not serve others if you are entering frustration mode).

So, if people are about to sing they create an image of themselves like super-Pop-Stars entering the stage. But deep in their minds they know, that they are no professional singers. So there is a gap arousing between their expectations about themselves and the reality. The next mistake is that people suppose that others now have the same expectations about them like they have on their own and this gap can create extreme pressure on themselves because they usually don’t want to disappoint others’ expectations. That could cause a lot of negative downsides, if the fear comes up that others see you’re actually not as “good” as they thought you to be. You might run the risk of not being as significant as expected and consequently not receive the love you’re craving.

Because our minds play such kind of games with us, we try to find a solution upfront. Just imagine this would happen in ancestral times and the group would leave you behind for not being (good) enough. If you would stay out alone, the sabre tooth would exactly eat you!

In order to solve this problem we have two options. First is to learn singing like a popstar. OK, we don’t have enough time for that, or maybe just not the talent as well. Let’s chose option two – Tell others upfront that you apologise for your bad singing and BOOOOOOOOOM. The negative thought is locked in. You told yourself you are a bad singer. Others know it, you heard it and now you created an identity. As we already know if you know that problem, you usually don’t want to disappoint others ideas about you and that is why you start singing very badly.

I am not saying otherwise you would be a great singer. What I want you to know is, that you shape your identity by the way you think and subsequently talk about yourself. Even though you won’t sing like a professional if you would think like one, you definitely would sing way better and the chances you perform at your peak level are way higher. Also your possibility of entering the flow would be way higher, if not losing yourself in negative self talk.

I guess you want to know now, how to overcome those negative talks. Well, the first step is already made – congratulations. It is just about becoming aware what is going on. So many people are not at that level yet. The next step is then to condition yourself on being aware and exercising awareness about your inner dialogue. As soon as you are very conscious about it, you also can make a conscious decision about changing it and live to your full potential – even though you might not start your opera career just with changing your thoughts, BUT it could happen if you’re talented. Who knows!? Doesn’t that sound great?