THE STORIES YOU TELL YOURSELF

We all tell stories to ourselves. These stories define the reality we live in, some are general statements such as:

“People are not reliable”

or

“Everyone deserves an access to education”

Some are certainties regarding ourself:

“I can’t talk in public”

These thoughts might derive from our family background and many other factors but in the end, only one question should be asked to know if we should keep holding on to them:

Does this belief help me evolve?

If a type of thinking prevents you from improving, you can gladly dispose of it.

And it’s easier than we believe, here’s the method I’ve been using so far to get rid of negative self-talk.

1: Slow down, and watch

To dissolve a limiting thought, you need to identify it, which is often very difficult: thoughts cross the space of our mind at light speed, they appear and disappear so fast that it’s almost as if nothing happened.

You can’t beat the speed of your mind (just like you can’t run faster than your own shadow), but you can learn to sit, meditate, and develop more awareness. As you become more skilled at this game, you gain the ability to see the judgements you have on yourself, their frequency and the part they play in your mental ecosystem.

That inventory of neurotic thoughts might not sound like a lot of fun, but don’t get depressed, please:

2: Rejoice

We often get disappointed when we directly see what thoughts occur in our mind, it’s not all pretty, rarely heroic: we often think very poorly of ourselves. Yet, negative mental patterns can only survive in the dark, they tend to disappear once detected. Make sure you rejoice as you shed light on your own thinking, no matter how negative it looks.

3: Dismantle

“Think for yourself, question authority” – Timothy Leary

Last step in this process is to question the thoughts you consider negative. Let’s take an example: “I’m not smart”.

We tend to validate that kind of ultimate judgements when they come from ourself, but would you let someone else throw that kind of crap at your face?

You’d probably ask them to back up their statement. So just ask yourself, honestly, what makes me think that I’m not smart?

You didn’t graduate in anything? The history of humanity is full of people who didn’t do well at school only to achieve brilliant carriers (Einstein was a mediocre student).

You consider some people around you to be smarter? How come you’re able to assess how smart they are if you’re that stupid?

The list goes on, just challenge your self-criticism with logics and honesty, doing so forces you to realize that your own judgements are arbitrary.

If you want this method to work, make it a habit, refuse to submit to negative thinking by seeing it and challenging it. Quickly enough, you’ll see results.

The ways we talk to ourselves condition us for the long haul. We might blame our negative thinking patterns on our abusive parents or past relationships, but until we decide to stop the process, the abuse is ours.

How about giving yourself a break?