Positive Self-Talk

Keep Your Self-Talk Positive by Focusing on the Here and Now

New research shows how to overcome negative ways of talking to yourself.

Susan Krauss Whitbourne Ph.D.

As you go about your day, do you find yourself constantly keeping up your own internal monologue? Are you even aware that you’re doing this? Perhaps you’ve been “interrupted” in a lengthy conversation with yourself while walking down what you thought was an empty hallway. There you were, leaving your office or apartment, while your inner voice accidentally became your outer voice. After a few odd glances from a coworker or neighbor, you went on your way, feeling just a tad embarrassed, or worse, if your little chat with yourself was sprinkled with some R-rated vocabulary.

Putting your thoughts into actual speech that others can hear is only one consequence of being a constant internal “monologuer.” What if that inner voice contains a constant drumbeat of self-criticism? You stew for what seems like hours, if not days, over a real or possibly imagined failing or mistake. Round and round go your thoughts about how you could have acted differently in a situation such as not being “nice enough” (in your opinion) to someone you care about, or how you got the wrong answer to a question in a public situation that caused you to look uninformed. As you continue to punish yourself over this unwanted outcome, your self-esteem and mood can only take a drubbing.

There can, however, be adaptive features to self-talk, particularly the kind that is intended to help you through a tough situation. As University of Wroclaw (Poland)’s Malgorzata Sobol-Kwapinska and colleagues (2019) note, “internal conversations… may help provide coherence and meaning to life experiences” (p. 444). As you have this little self-chat, you work through your own story of a past experience from which you can benefit or learn. You might also talk to yourself in order to tell yourself what you need to do. This time of self-talk, as the Polish authors note, becomes a “meta-monitoring” in which you see how far you’re coming toward achieving an important goal. In other cases, those conversations might involve an imaginary other person such as a significant other or person you’re not sure how to speak to in a particular situation. You actively rehearse what you’re going to say when you actually see this person, and in the process, hone in on the proper words you want to use.

A key difference between an adaptive and maladaptive form of self-talk, then, seems to be its tone, and whether it’s positive or negative. Furthermore, as the Polish authors point out, your inner monologue can operate along a temporal dimension from past to future. Thus, you can revisit past positive experiences as you construct a pleasant self-narrative, or you can torment yourself over past experiences that went wrong. You could also think with dread about the future or with pleasant anticipation. Sobol-Kwapinska et al. note that negative self-talk focused on the past is particularly likely to characterize people who experience depressed mood. Negative self-talk about the future, similarly, can contribute to a sense of fatalism as you imagine that all is lost, no matter what you do. In between the past and future, of course, there’s the present. In this regard, the University of Wroclaw researcher and her coauthors suggest that taking a “Carpe Diem,” or “seize the moment” perspective could provide a remedy to people who expend their mental energy on what went wrong in the past and could go wrong in the future. As they note, “Attention on the present, combined with perceiving the current moment as valuable, reduces the frequency of mentally returning to the negative past or thinking ahead into the uncertain future” (p. 447). This present-focus can reduce “the need to hide in an internal world of imaginary persons or to escape to imaginary relationships that can supplant real-life ones” (p. 448).

Now ask yourself once again whether you’re the type of person to expend your mental energy on inner chatter, and if so, whether it's about self-blame, feelings of missed opportunities, and the conviction that all will continue to wrong in the future. If so, how could a Carpe Diem framework help you refocus your self-talk in a more positive direction?

Sobol-Kwapinska and her fellow researchers investigated whether people high in the personality trait of neuroticism would be more likely to engage in internal "dialogues" (the term they used for self-talk) of the self-critical nature, particularly regarding the past. Countering this detrimental effect on mood, the authors believed that being able to take the Carpe Diem approach could inoculate the highly neurotic from letting this negative self-talk harm their equilibrium. The sample of 113 community-residing adults ages 20 to 40 (about 50% women, average age of 26 years old) completed measures tapping neuroticism, time perspective (both positive and negative toward past and future), type of internal conversations, and that Carpe Diem mentality.

To see how you would rate on the inner self-talk measures, consider your responses to items such as “I often talk to myself” (pure dialogical activity), “I discuss with myself who I really am” (identity dialogue), and “I often beat myself up in my thoughts” (ruminative dialogues). There were also scales assessing positive self-talk such as “I like to predict what other people will say and respond to their thoughts” (taking a point of view). Time perspective questions took the form of past-positive (“I like family rituals and traditions that are regularly repeated”), past-negative (“Things rarely work out as I expected”), present hedonistic (“I often follow my heart more than my head”), and present fatalistic (“Often luck pays off better than hard work”). Finally, the future orientation scale asked questions about plans such as “It upsets me to be late for appointments.” The Carpe Diem scale asked participants to indicate their agreement with statements such as “The present is very important for me.”

The findings showed that, in general, people high in neuroticism were, as predicted, less likely to engage in the kind of inner dialogues that made them feel better. However, if they were high in the Carpe Diem mentality, their high neuroticism could be buffered so as not to produce negative self-talk. As the authors concluded, “The Carpe Diem perspective probably helps in redirecting attention away from negative internal experiences troubling the mind, and toward the external world” (pp. 455-456). Regardless of neuroticism levels, though, the Carpe Diem perspective was associated with a greater tendency to engage in supportive inner dialogues in which you talk to yourself with words of encouragement. Again, focusing on the here and now, rather than the past or future, allows you to turn your attention to “current and valuable issues” (p. 456).

To sum up, there’s no need to be concerned if your occasional mental gabbing turns into its audible version should someone catch you in the act. More concerning should be the type of self-talk that causes you to spend time focusing on what was (and can’t be changed) or what could happen in the future (and could turn out badly for you). That here-and-now approach of the Carpe Diem mentality can allow you to be as focused as you can in the moment, allowing your self-talk to help rather than hinder you in achieving your goals.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201909/keep-your-self-talk-positive-focusing-the-here-and-now

Replacing Your Negative Thoughts

Replace Your Negative Thoughts with Transforming Thoughts of Joy, Passion and Purpose

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The subconscious mind is our storehouse of all past experiences, values, attitudes, and beliefs. Old, painful emotions get stored as programs in your subconscious mind, where they hamper your responses to life. Now imagine being able to tap into that same program, dropping in one positive thought after another—that’s the power of Faith in Focus.

If you want to live your life as God wants you to live it—with joy, passion, and purpose—- then this audio program can be an important catalyst for that transformation. Ultimately, the happiness we experience in our life depends on the quality of our thoughts; therefore, we must guard them accordingly.

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Why Is It Hard to Say “No” and How Can You Get Better At It?

Dave wasn’t quite ready to get married, but his girlfriend, Lizzie, had made it clear that the time had arrived. She brought it up almost daily. “We’ve been together for four years,” she said. “I know you love me. We’re really happy together. So why you don’t want to marry me?”

Dave knew she was right. He loved Lizzie and wanted to be with her forever. But some part of him still wanted to say “no” to marriage, at least for the moment. He just couldn’t explain it to her.

Janie had recently broken up with her boyfriend, and her friends were pressuring her to sign up to an Internet dating site. But Janie was reluctant. “My biggest problem is not whether or not any guys will be interested in me,” she said a little shyly. “I’m sure someone out there will be. But what if I’m not interested in them? How do I politely reject someone? I just hate the idea of hurting someone’s feelings. And what if someone doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer? It’s hard for me to be really firm.”

Larry’s buddies were going to an expensive club. Larry didn’t have that kind of money to blow on a night of drinking, and he also didn’t really want to get wasted, which he knew was going to be the end result of the evening. But he could not figure out how to get out of it without pissing off all of his friends.

Susie had landed a paying internship at the company of her dreams. She knew that she was starting at the bottom, but she had hopes that her new employers would be impressed by her abilities and that she would quickly move up in the business. At her interview she had said that she would be willing to do anything they wanted, but really, she had no idea that they were going to expect her to keep the kitchen clean and pick up coffee and doughnuts for the morning meeting.  

Do any of these situations sound familiar?

In a recent Forbes Business article Jonathan Becher(link is external) offers several quotes from powerful men who consider “no” to be an important part of a successful life strategy: Here are just three of his examples:

Steve Jobs: “Focusing is about saying ‘no.’”

Warren Buffett: “We need to learn the slow ‘yes’ and the quick ‘no.’”

Tony Blair: “The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.”

But for many of us, it’s not so easy to develop this art.

Why is this?

Fear of conflict

Many of us are afraid of conflict. We don’t like others to be angry with us or critical of us. We therefore avoid saying “no” when we are afraid that it will put us into conflict with someone else, whether that someone is an intimate partner, a colleague or friend, or a supervisor or boss. Many of us also try to avoid battles with our children, because we feel that if we say “no” to them, they will stop loving us.

As children we are taught not to go against authority. We are supposed to do what parents, teachers, and others in power tell us to do. We obey because of fears of being punished, but also because of a desire to please and be loved by these people who are very important to us. We carry this worry with us into adulthood.

But we are also pulled by a desire to fit in with and be liked by our peers. Research has shown that men and women have a tremendous need to belong to a peer group. Whether boy or girl, man or woman, we desire acceptance by our friends, or the people we want to be friends with, as a way of establishing and maintaining a sense of identity, of “selfness.”

Don’t want to disappoint or hurt someone

So, you don’t want to tell your mom you won’t be home for the holidays because she’ll be so disappointed. Okay, makes sense, right? Sometimes we do things that make others feel better, even if it’s not quite what we want to do. But what if she’s going to be disappointed that you are making a job or a career choice that she doesn’t like, but that is your total dream? Or what about something small, like disappointing a friend by not going out to dinner with her when you’ve got a huge work project due the next day? Or even smaller, what if you and your boyfriend or girlfriend can’t agree on a restaurant or a movie? Do you give in so that they won’t be disappointed?

Desire to be unique

Yet we are also encouraged to think “outside the box,” to focus on our unique talents and our personal truths. Most of us want to be viewed as special in some way, as different from the very group that we belong to. It is sometimes this need to be seen as a separate person that drives those of us who defy authority, often to our own detriment. “You’re not the boss of me,” shouted at some time or another by many young children, is a driving life force for all of us. But of course defiance and purposefully unacceptable behavior can backfire. It can make you stand out, but it can also separate you from the very group that you want to belong to.

Here’s a funny thing about the quality of specialness and difference. It seems that for many of us, feeling different feels best within the context of an accepting, affirming peer group!

Harder for women?

My PT colleague Kathryn Lively writes that women often have difficulty saying “no” to men, because we want to get along, want to be nice and don’t want to hurt another person’s feelings. In my work as a therapist over the years, I have certainly seen plenty of examples of this phenomenon; but I have also worked with many men who don’t say “no” because they don’t want to “rock the boat.”

What can you do about it?

Techniques

There are many techniques for getting better at saying “no,” once you’ve located some of the psychological reasons that make it difficult.

• Marcia Linehan, creator of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), suggests practicing saying “no” in small, unimportant situations, like not buying something at a drugstore.
• Eating disorder specialist and my PT colleague Susan Albers suggests that you stop and breathe before saying “yes,” in order to give yourself a little space and an opportunity to assess and respond to your own needs.
• Seek advice. We’ll talk more about this in a moment, but in essence the point is to get backup for your own position.
• Don’t be fooled by the word “everyone else…” It is almost universally untrue that everyone else is doing the same thing or wants you to do whatever is being asked of you.
• Take a minute to ask yourself how bad the guilt, anxiety, disappointment or other emotions you might feel if you don’t do whatever’s being asked of you will be. Can you tolerate them? Is it worth it to do that thing in order not to feel those feelings?
• Assess the fallout. How bad will it be? Again, is it worth it to give in? Or not to?Consider that there is no perfect answer. If you say “yes” this time, you can try “no” sometime later. And maybe, just maybe, “yes” this time will make it easier to say “no” the next time.
• Remember that you can change your mind in most cases. Don’t get trapped by the belief that you only have one opportunity. There will be many more (see above).
• And finally, remember that sometimes “yes” is actually a better answer. We’ll talk more about this in a minute.

Getting backup

So how does this fit with saying “no”? It seems that most of us feel much better about saying “no” to someone if we have the backup of some buddies or folks that we trust.

Dave, for example, talked to his brothers and sister about his quandary with Lizzie. They helped him to put into words what he was feeling, and also to think about what was going on for Lizzie. After several conversations, he was able to explain to Lizzie that he loved her very much but wanted to ask her to marry him on his own time. Every time she brought it up, he felt like she was telling him what to do – “like my Mom, not my future wife.” They agreed that this theme of Lizzie acting like his Mom and Dave acting like a kid was something they needed to work on in their relationship in general. But now that they had a way of talking and thinking about why he was dragging his heels, Lizzie actually didn’t feel the need to keep pressuring him anymore!

Janie’s friends offered her a variety of techniques for saying “no” to guys, from “ghosting” or simply not answering their calls, which she said she could never do, to saying nicely but firmly that she simply didn’t think it was going to work. “It’s just part of the process,” she realized. “It’s not me being a mean or bad person.”

Larry also talked to a couple of friends who were not part of the drinking group. They told him that they just saw it as a waste of their time. “You spend a ton of money on something that leaves you feeling miserable and that affects your performance the next day,” they told him. “And the truth is, those guys won’t even notice if you don’t go. They’re just pushing you because they want the company.” To Larry’s amazement, they were right. He simply said that he couldn’t do it the next time, and after a couple of tries to change his mind, the other guys left him alone. And there was no change in the way they treated him at work. “I don’t even know that they realized I wasn’t there in the end,” he said.

Sometimes, “no” is the wrong word

Susie’s situation was a little different. In her case, after talking to several friends who supported her indignation – “you weren’t hired as a gofer or a maid!” said one, and “they wouldn’t do that to a guy,” said another – Susie talked to an older mentor, who said that in fact they would and had done exactly the same with male interns, that she was at the very bottom of the ladder, and that if she hung in there and made herself as useful as possible, not just in menial tasks but also doing research for projects and even, when appropriate, offering thoughts or ideas about current and future projects, she would soon find herself moving up the ladder. Her mentor said that she was not encouraging her to make herself into a doormat or that she accept inappropriate demands, but that in this particular case saying “no” would be counterproductive. And she then pointed to two senior members of the staff and said that they had each been interns at one time – and had each cleaned the fridge and brought coffee to the other staff.

F. Diane Barth L.C.S.W.Off the Couch