Empower the Vision In You Coaching tip #10

Welcome back to “Empower The Vision In You” coaching series of blogs. This is coaching tip #10  in a series over a 30 day period. Each one builds upon the one before it. 

In the last coaching article, I wrote about how staying where you are and being stuck is the result of wanting to stay where you are MORE than you want to move forward; otherwise, why would you be in that position in the first place? Think long and hard about that. Here is another example using a romantic relationship.  It is no longer satisfying and you are not feeling the love–but you stay.

You are miserable and unhappy, but you stay. Why? The reason is because it serves you more to stay in it than to end it. Why? Because then you have to make some serious lifestyle changes. You have to go through some difficult emotional upheavals and so on. So you just stay where you are instead of doing the work that needs to be done to create a more satisfying and fulfilling life in the area of relationships. Staying outweighs leaving…

In an earlier article, I wrote about coaching tip #10, negative self talk, and how it is one of the most powerful reasons as to why a person doesn’t move forward in achieving what he or she wants in life. I would like to talk a bit more about that to make sure that you understand how it works instead of just knowing that you have it and need to change it.

So where did self talk come from? It is based on fact of actual medical and neurological research. Negative self talk comes from the experiences and conditioning that we have had in our past. It doesn’t just come out of the sky and into our brains. We think the way we do because of situations and associations that have happened repeatedly over and over that lead to a conclusion that, in fact, ends up how being how we believe about ourselves. Another way of putting it is this:  Our heredity, our past experiences, and our environment give us our personal beliefs. The beliefs can be limiting in nature as a result of those factors. By limiting I mean, the beliefs can hold us back and we don’t even realize why.  (The beliefs are deeply rooted in the subconscious mind so they are below the surface.)

Many use the analogy of a computer being programmed. If you put in a program, what is produced as the outcome comes from the data imputed into the computer. If you change the program, you change the resulting outcome. When you are trying to change self talk think of it as reprogramming your mind to get rid of old programs and installing new ones.

How do you do that? It is simple but challenging to do. It is repetition over and over. The old negative self talk didn’t just show up. It is a culmination of years and experiences and conditioning. So, it will take some time to eradicate it and replace it with positive, good living choices.

Here’s an exercise for today: The purpose of this exercise is to help you identify negative self talk and replace with a positive self statement. I want you to think of a situation in your life that irritates you. Write down all the negative self talk you have that goes along with the situation. Write a description of the “feeling” that accompanies the negative self talk.

NOW, I WANT YOU TO TURN IT AROUND. WRITE A POSITIVE STATEMENT THAT IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF THE NEGATIVE ONE. Does the situation look a little more manageable after changing to a positive statement? When the negative statement comes to mind replace it immediately with the positive one. This will begin to change the neural pathway to the brain.

For example: “I can’t stay on a diet. I am weak it is too hard”.

Positive statement: “I am consciously eating healthy food. I am learning new ways of looking at food and getting better at it all the time”.

Be on the lookout for tip #11 from Empower the Vision in You Coaching Series.