When you want to take your life to the next level or be the badass babe you were meant to be, you gotta stop downing yourself. You can't be a bawse when you are always telling yourself how much you suck! Today's post will help you combat negative self-talk with 10 activities you can do every day.
1. Say Your Positive Affirmations
The first step to combatting negative self-talk? Say your affirmations, y'all! Pick a few phrases to say to yourself daily when you are feeling down or negative. Choose phrases that make you feel empowered, brilliant, and stunning. Write these phrases down over and over or say them aloud. Whatever you need to do to commit them to memory.
2. Ban Words From Your Vocabulary
Sometimes you just need to take a marker and ban some words from your vocabulary. Pick some words that you tell yourself often that get you down. Stricken those words from your vocabulary for a day, for a week, or for months on end. Whatever you need to do to make sure you aren't using negative words.
3. Catch Yourself In The Act
The best thing you can do to combat negative self-talk is to catch yourself in the act. The other day I caught myself saying something negative about my freelance career based on some past BS, and I called myself out on it. Don't play the victim or lean on negative words. Catch yourself in the act and call yourself out on it. Get to the bottom of why you felt the need to say those words passively.
Often we use these negative words as a crutch, but that's the last thing you should do. Stand up for yourself in the moment so you can make better decisions.
4. Use The 2:1 Method
One way that I love to combat negative self-talk is to use the 2:1 method. For every negative thing I say about myself, I tell myself two positive things! You need to drown out any negative thoughts that you might have, and a great way to do that is to spread more positivity than you do negativity. The next time you catch yourself in the act of saying something negative, make sure you say two positive things in return!
5. Surround Yourself With Powerfully Supportive People
A lot of the change you make to seeing yourself in a positive light will come from inside, but it doesn't hurt to surround yourself with powerfully supportive people.
Supportive friends will help you boost your self-esteem by showing you what they see all the time. Have friends you get into compliment battles with instead of petty fights. You will love yourself so much better after hanging out with them!
6. Create A Yes Folder
You have received more positive feedback than you truly know.
No matter your field, grab all those positive comments you have ever heard about yourself and put them in a physical or digital folder. Maybe you got some excellent feedback on a paper, or you got a great performance review at work, or you even have a client that can't stop raving about you, collect it all.
Then when you feel down, or you find yourself saying negative things, revisit that folder, and be reminded that you are a bawse bitch.
7. Delete Things That Make You Feel Like Crap
We can be virtual hoarders, and it can be awful.
Instead of saving those messages from your piece of crap ex where he is tearing you down and making you feel like a poop emoji, delete those messages.
Instead of saving a scathing email from a boss who obviously just didn't like you, delete that email.
We like to revisit and re-open old wounds when we shouldn't.
Sometimes getting over these events is hard, but it's even harder when we refuse to get rid of the evidence. So, get rid of the evidence.
8. Think: Is This Something I Can Actually Control?
Sometimes we are worried about things that we can't even control. This is definitely something that you need to stop doing. If you can't manage it, if it's out of your hands, you gotta let go and let God.
9. Ask Yourself: But What If It Works?
Sometimes we talk to ourselves negatively because deep down we are scared. We are scared of what happens next, we are scared to fail, we are scared to try.
What if we flipped the script on our brains, “what if it works?”
Our lives would be so much happier and healthier if we chased our dreams and actually made it work.
So, when your brain is running a million miles a minute serving you a million scenarios that probably won't happen, ask yourself, “but what if it works?”
10. Burn Your Negative thoughts
A good bonfire never hurt anyone, y'all.
Get together with a few besties and have a doubt burning party.
Create a well-managed bonfire and get to burning those negative thoughts and doubts.
Once they are burned, you can't think those thoughts anymore.
11. Don't Let A Negative Moment Turn Into A Negative Day
Last, but not least, if you want to combat negative self-talk, you gotta let negative moments be negative moments.
“Was it a bad day, or was it a bad five minutes that you milked all day?”
I think that we have a tendency to drag things out further than they need to be dragged. Yes, you may have had a particularly rough morning, and you might get angry at yourself in the morning. There is no reason for that lousy morning to turn into a bad afternoon or evening. You have to start cutting things off, for your own sake!
Conclusion
Y'all, 2018 is the year of me building myself up, because I don't have any time for negative energy in my life right now. Building up my freelance business requires that I am as confident and happy as I can be. Yes, I have some bad days (or some bad five minutes that I milk for a day), but I can't let that take over my life.
I hope that you have gotten something useful from today's article because I want you to shut down your inner critic too!
Did I miss something? I would love to know: how do you combat negative self-talk?
Extra Reading
4 Ways to Stop Beating Yourself Up, Once and For All by Psychology Today
12 Powerful Tips to Overcome Negative Thoughts (and Embrace Positive Thinking) by The Positivity Blog
Negative Self-Talk: 9 Ways To Silence Your Inner Critic by Huffington Post
