Have you ever had negative self talk? Would you like to know a little trick to reprogram your brain?
First, you must understand if you put negative into your brain you are feeding what is called a failure system. When you put positive into your brain then you are feeding a success system.
We are always feeding one or the other. It's automatic, whether you realize it's happening or not. This is just how our brains work.
I know somehow I was lucky enough to have my brain to be programmed with mostly positive. I don't know when or where it started. I suspect that it was from what my Mother would say to me as I was growing up. I can recall her saying,' look on the bright side" and "things could be worse." There was no whining or feeling sorry for yourself. She would say something like,"What's that whining?" That meant knock it off. She also said, "We don't have pity parties around here." For me, this made me stop and think about things. It was a pattern interrupt. She wasn't about to let me be negative or to have a pattern of negative behaviour. I didn't think good or bad about this other than she was my Mother trying to teach me about life and how you are suppose to be.
Does this mean I'm never ever negative? No, it doesn't! I'm always working on this. For me, most days are better than others. I also need to mention that if I don't grab the bull by the horns and take care of my head trash it can spiral into depression.
There's a saying, "what you focus on, you'll get." This is true. When you focus on positive you will get positive or if you're focusing on negative then you will get negative. In essence, the more you focus on something the more you'll get of that. An example, from myself is a few years ago, I had a lot of debt. All I could thing about was how much this debt affected my life and that I couldn't do the things I wanted to do because the debt had to be paid first. At that time, I'll I could do is maintain the interest payments and pay very little to decrease the debt load. I worried all the time about how I was going to pay this debt. When I focused on how much it was, it seemed the more sick with worry I felt about how I was going to pay this debt and the overwhelming feeling of how out of control things were. I could do a whole talk on debt but that's not what today's blog is about. I stopped focusing on how much it was and started focusing on decreasing it, even if it was a small amount. I would look for ways to decrease this debt here and there. I didn't realize it at the time, I also did something called future pasting. When I thought about the debt I started thinking about how good I would feel when this debt was paid in the future. I would think about having a better job that would make it possible to pay more on this debt. Believe it or not... this is exactly what happened. I got a job that had a lot of overtime and that made it possible to pay 2/3 maybe even more of this massive debt. Today, I can say it won't be long until the rest of this debt is paid. It took about a year to get where it is now. I also want you to know, I did not think it would take me a year. I thought it would take about 10 years. Note, my job is considered temporary/seasonal because once we are done building, we can't keep building. The way it works for my job (I'm an electrician) is when they need to bring in workers they call us to go to the job, and when we are done our part of the job, we get laid off and have to wait to be called to go to the next project. The next project can be the next day, next week, next month or next year. Although it's never been up to a year, it can be months which is why I started another business nothing to do with being an electrician.
Today, I will have multiple action steps due to I don't want to leave you on a down note. Obviously, you can do this at your own pace and take breaks when you feel the need to have a break.
I want to be clear that this information is mostly from Noah St. John if you want to search more on him and it is taken from either video content he made or a book he has wrote. I really like what he teaches. I'm not being paid to market or talk about this in any form. It's simply what I used. I'm being transparent about that so that you know I did not create this stuff all on my own and in this manner you have the ability to get the information from the source if you desire it.
Action Step 1:
Write down the negative things you tell yourself. Do this before reading Action Step 2.
Let' get a grip on this and acknowledge that it is there. This doesn't mean that it's true. We need to know what we are telling ourselves first. Once we do this we can turn it around. This is the hardest part. At least, it was for me. I actually didn't want to do this. I'm glad I did. Give yourself permission to acknowledge your negative talk and move past them. I know it was a scary thing for me to do but if I can do it you can do it. Don't let fear, excuses or anything else stand in your way! I have faith in you that you can do this too!
My Action Step Results:
What I tell myself might have some similarities to what you tell yourself or it might be completely different.
I bought a new journal to help myself go down this road to change. You do what you think and feels right for you whether it's a journal book or a binder you can add pages to.
Here's a snapshot of what I wrote in my journal.
Make sure you do this before moving on to the next section.
(The page number is a reference to the page it came from in the book, "Afformations" by Noah St. John.)
Action Step 2:
Take your negatives and turn them into positive afformations. Make sure you have done action step 1 and 2 before reading action step 3. It's very important. I did not want to do Action step 1 at all and I can say, "I'm really glad I did!"
Explanation and My Action Step Results:
What is an afformation? The word is a new word and to understand it you need to grasp what an affirmation is.
Have you ever heard of affirmations? I bet you have. A positive affirmation statement is a reinforcing statement that you use with your name, the present tense and a vision. They say you should speak your positive affirmation around 3 to 5 times a day.
Some people say it works and if you believe it when you say it then it will work. What I really mean by that is, when I tell myself something that I don’t actually believe, then the affirmation isn’t going to work. When I say something like, “I am rich.”
Do I honestly think I am rich or that I will be rich in the future by stating this?
If I believed it… Then it would work (I'd be already rich.). However, for me my brain kicks into the failure system. It tells me, “no you are not. How do you think that’s going to happen? It’s not.” My brain will automatically kick in a bunch of negative things. That is also called, "negative self talk".
Noah St. John wrote a book called, "Afformations". He says, that you can change affirmations into afformations by taking an affirmation and turning it into a question.
I personally have been working on this for the last couple of weeks. I’m starting to see a difference. Here’s what Mr. St.John says will happen, our brain will search for a way for the question(s) to be true.
If I say, “why am I so rich?” My brain will search for the answer to that question. For myself, my brain comes up with: I own a house, I own a car, I have everything I need, I have a loving husband, I have three loving children, I have wonderful grandchildren, and the list continues in a positive manner like that. This makes it possible for my success system in my brain to kick into gear and really get to work! Here’s the beautiful thing about this that I've also found, I don’t want to disappoint myself. If I say, “ why do I have so much success?” I automatically think because I've worked hard for the things I've already achieved and then for my future success to be true I need to work hard on whatever it is I want. In turn, I find I am now taking more action towards things I want to accomplish rather than procrastinating because my brain needs it to be true.
Noah St. John’s book is called, “Afformations”.
Another good book I can suggest is, “Psycho-cybernetics”. This book explains in detail more of the psychology on the success system and failure systems we have in our brains.
A snapshot below are the afformations I wrote for myself in my journal. You might find them helpful to do your own afformations and you may want to use some of them to help you get started. I find over time, it is getting easier to come up with my own afformations. Remember, you must do the first two action steps before you do action step 3. Have a little bit of faith that this is for your benefit.
(The page number is a reference to the page it came from in the book, "Afformations" by Noah St. John.)
Action Step 3:
How did it feel doing the action steps above? Write down how it felt to do action step one and then write down how you felt when you did action step 2. I hope you did them and didn't just read ahead. Once you do your's then look at my results. I bet they are somewhat similar. I'm really curious how you made out. Let me know in the comments below or shoot me a message on Facebook I'd love to hear from you.
My Action Step Results:
(The page number is a reference to the page it came from in the book, "Afformations" by Noah St. John.)
Ironically, I couldn't stand the negative page I had just did and wanted to spice up the second page so I added a positive quote at the top and then added the doodles as I wrote in the second page. I didn't know I would be writing how it made me feel. I choose the dark brown pen to write the negative and I choose the pink to write the positive. You can really see what I was thinking and the affect it had on me when I did this exercise! I really hope you can see how this exercise means you can always get past your negative thoughts about yourself. It might take some time to see results. If you do this I will bet you will see results quicker than you think. I know I did. The next time you have a negative thought write it down and find a way to turn it into a positive afformation. If you want to see my afformations click here.