When You Talk to Yourself, What Do You Say?
Photo by Andre Mouton on Unsplash
At Momentum Consulting, we often focus on interpersonal communication; that’s how we deliver our thoughts, ideas and emotions to each other. We talk a lot about our own accountability in a conversation with someone else because so many of us spend our waking hours getting along with other people.
But what about the relationship, the communication, we have with ourselves?
Our internal dialogue drives the way we relate to others. Think about it. Is your self-talk focused on joy, gratitude and love or stress, inadequacies and guilt? Are you even aware of your self-talk? Sometimes it’s so automatic, you don’t even notice it.
Our emotions drive our thoughts, but we typically think of it the other way around. We think something happens, we create a thought, then we contemplate how we feel about that thought. In reality, we experience something that elicits an emotion, and that emotion drives thought and action.
The feeling is always underneath all of it.
If it feels negative or uncomfortable, we compensate and avoid the feeling. This shows up in behavior as arguing, deflecting, ignoring the issue, or blaming. These behaviors mask the real negative dialogue we are having with ourselves.
“The world can only see us as we see ourselves.”
How do you really see yourself?
Not how do you think about yourself, but how do you feel about you? Are there negative self-talk patterns in there? Are you overly hard on yourself, more so than you are on others? Sometimes these unhelpful thoughts are around for no other reason than habit. What if you challenged yourself to acknowledge the negative thoughts and also make room for positive ones?
In Hawkins’s book, Letting Go, he writes…
Look at the feeling that is directly opposite the negative one that we experience and begin to let go resisting it.
The purpose of this exercise is to locate within ourselves that which can only be described as greatness. Greatness is the courage to overcome obstacles. It is the willingness to move to a higher level of love. It is the acceptance of others’ humanness and having compassion for their suffering by putting ourselves in their shoes. Out of the forgiveness of others come self-forgiveness and the relief of guilt. The real payoff we get is when we let go of our negativity and choose to be loving; we are the ones who benefit.
This exercise can provide a completely different context for you and an opportunity to allow peace, joy and worthiness that you absolutely deserve. How you perceive yourself is how you perceive the world. What world do you live in?
With great reverence for you,
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Fundamental of the Week #4: GIVE UP THE NEED TO BE RIGHT
Keep your ego, personal agenda, and judgments out of the way of doing what’s best for the team or client. Don’t let your need to “be right” interfere with hearing others and seeing other possibilities.
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