Did You Punish or Praise Yourself Today?

Here is a good inner game newsletter from the guys at Pickup Arts. It deals with self talk. Self talk can definately make or break your self esteem.

Self Talk’s Effect on Self Esteem by Jay Valens

How do you see yourself?

I don’t mean what you see when you look in the mirror. What I mean
is, how do you perceive yourself in your own thoughts?

You may not have realized this but how you see yourself is more
important than how others see you. The reason is that the basis of
how people perceive you is rooted FIRST in how you perceive
yourself.

Simply put, the foundation of how others perceive you is based
mostly on how you perceive yourself and how this perception of
yourself permeates outward.

If you see yourself as a loser who doesn’t get attention, then
you’re just causing your own failure before you begin.

If you see yourself as a winner who people love to be around then,
even if it’s not really true, at least you are giving yourself a
CHANCE to succeed.

Giving YOURSELF a chance is better than giving up.

This is easier said than done for most. Working against your
current self-image in order to create and believe in a new one
might take you some time but it is possible and will make a huge
difference for you.

First, let’s understand where negative a self-image might come from.

In your life, the following may have happened to you at least once,
perhaps many times:

– Someone said something negative about you
– You talk about yourself negatively to yourself or others
– You made a mistake, and others criticized you for it
– You made a mistake, and criticized yourself for it
– You failed to achieve something you wanted
– You failed to obtain something you wanted

These are all real experiences for real people, everyone has dealt
with all of the above at some point in their lives, typically many
times.

The difference, the thing that has the most impact on how your
self-image is formed is how you react and deal with those
experiences.

Did you get that?

The important thing, above all else, for YOU and for NOW, is not
what happened to you but how you handled it emotionally and how it
affected your self-image.

Remember, nobody and nothing can affect or change your self-image
unless you give them permission, because you are the one in control
of that. And, ultimately, people you meet face-to-face are not
going to judge you on a past of yours they know nothing about, they
will decide how they feel about you based on how they perceive you.
And, as I said already, that perception is mostly based on how you
perceive yourself.

So if you’ve spent a life full of moments where you’ve criticized
yourself, talked negatively to yourself, or allowed what others
said or did to affect your self-image negatively, then you’ve got
some work to do to repair that self-image.

How can you do that?

First, realize you can very easily stop living in the past by
focusing on today. If your self-image is very negative then don’t
even worry about tomorrow – focus on today. Focus on goals that
you can achieve today and don’t leave idle time where you dwell on
the past. That is the first step.

The next step is simple behavioral changes. These are easy to do,
but you just need to be aware of them and be more aware of your own
through process and how you react to things.

– If you find yourself worrying, try to focus on the positives of a
situation and not the negatives. Give yourself some confidence
that you can achieve what you want and base this confidence on the
positives. If you can’t think of any positives, realize that if an
outcome is uncertain then you at least have a chance and THAT is a
positive.

– If you run into criticism from others, go ahead and let them say
what they want, but realize that you have full control over whether
their criticism will affect your self-image. Take it as feedback
on that person’s perception, whether it is right or wrong, and use
it to improve yourself in the future.

– If you catch yourself talking about yourself negatively (even to
yourself in your thoughts) then STOP and realize that all you are
doing is damaging your own self-image. Instead, be kind to
yourself and give yourself a break. Nobody is perfect, and neither
are you. We all have our own issues and don’t need to beat
ourselves up about it. Replace such thoughts with positive
observations of yourself.

– If you make a mistake, don’t beat yourself up over it. Applaud
yourself for trying, learn from it, and move on. Every successful
person has made more mistakes than have experienced success so
realize that and it will help you look on such situations
positively. It takes a lot more guts to try and make a mistake
than not try at all, and that in of itself is a great way to look
at it.

– If there was something you were trying to achieve and couldn’t do
it, it’s OK and realize there is always tomorrow. You can create
new opportunities and do better next time. Don’t allow the outcome
of such things affect they way you see yourself. OK, so maybe you
didn’t achieve a goal, but that should not cause you to be negative
about yourself. Don’t let external things determine how you feel
about yourself. If you can stay positive, that will have a far
greater influence on your success in your future endeavors than if
you allow failures to degrade your self-image.

– If there was something you wanted but didn’t get, then understand
that most people don’t get what they want. Whether it’s something
you can try to obtain again or not, such an external thing should
not influence how you perceive yourself.

– Finally, always visualize yourself succeeding in your endeavors.
Such positive thoughts build up your confidence which can actually
affect the outcome.

See you later!

Jay Valens

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