The Only Way to Manage Critical Self-Talk
It’s not what you think
Self-talk can help or hinder personal growth. Understand you control your inner narrative, and you will be a step closer to self-mastery. When you use it as a navigation system, it will help you find your way through life.
You’ll meet a variety of people in your lifetime. Some will drive you up the wall. Others, you’ll love like crazy. Even more, well, they won’t make an impression.
The person you must live with, like it or not, though, who has the most significant influence over your emotions is you.
One way people know who they are (or imagine they do) is via the little voice in their heads. If you’ve embarked on a journey of self-mastery, however, you’ll understand self-talk isn’t actually you. It’s an accumulation of ideas wired into your brain until this moment.
For now, though, we’ll assume you’ve been paying attention to self-talk as though it was the ‘you’ running the show (your life).
Human inner talk was born at the moment language was created. It gave voice to the way people think, including their fears.
Often, self-talk is beneficial. It’s a direct link to our inner guidance system. Like your car’s satellite navigation gadget, your guide transmits helpful information to steer you toward what you want and help you avoid places you don’t want to go.
The only trouble is most people haven’t learned to recognize their inner voice as guidance, and even if they have, they misread it.
Imagine, for a moment, that the sat nav in your vehicle instructs you to turn right to get to the programmed destination. But you misheard it and turned left.
You wouldn’t get where you wanted to go, and you’d be frustrated and upset. A similar thing happens when people misread their inner voices.
Self-talk is a different language to the one sat navs use, though. It lets you know you’re afraid, not by saying, “You are scared. Avoid the situation in front of you.” Or “you’re afraid. It’s time to build self-esteem.”
Rather, it says things like “Nobody will like you at the party” and “You’re not good enough.”
Indeed, your inner guidance system comes across as mean despite its good intentions.
The only way to see it as it’s intended to be viewed is by reading its language correctly. You need to understand that when it mentions you aren’t good enough, it’s voicing your fear of not being good enough.
It’s not telling you some great truth about your competence, intelligence, beauty, or whatever it refers to.
Likewise, if self-talk informs you not to advance and take up a potentially helpful opportunity for growth, it intends to let you know you’re afraid to leave your comfort zone and take a leap of faith.
Such guidance doesn’t mean embarking on a new venture will end in tears and misfortune, only that you are scared of such things. So, the answer is to gather information and protect yourself against possible mishaps. It’s getting professional advice from someone experienced. It’s developing a plan B.
When you learn the language of self-talk, you recognize it’s a friend rather than an enemy to be shunned. There’s no need to wipe it out.
Without the little voice in your head, your brain’s way of talking to you is limited. Peaceful, yes. You’ll know what I mean if you’ve ever meditated enough that the voice stops for a while. It’s bliss.
Nonetheless, no part of you, even self-talk, is bad. Each bit of you, including every physical reaction, is designed to help, not hinder.
Your inner voice doesn’t attack you or try to harm you. It’s just a guide. Once you know this, you can stop battling and use it as a helpful instrument.
