There have probably been times when you’ve heard a little voice in your head criticizing you in your daily life. There’s good criticism and then there’s bad criticism. Most of the time, I think we catch that little voice spouting more negative than positive criticism. It’s always viewing what you say and do in a negative light. This is negative self-talk. It’s when that inner dialogue blocks you from believing in yourself and the abilities you possess. It can shift your confidence drastically leading you to have no faith in yourself whatsoever. Words are very impactful when it comes to your confidence. Continuing negative self-talk will only lead to high-stress levels, low self-esteem, lack of motivation and feeling of helplessness. By indulging in negative self-talk, you’re only altering your reality and creating this experience where you believe you don’t have the ability to reach the goals you have set for yourself. Of course, there are few and small ways to limit negative self-talk.
Stop Criticizing Yourself and Minimizing Your Success
We’re our own worst critic. We always expect more of ourselves than other people do, leading us to feel like the reality of who we are is always falling short of who we believe we should be. Part of that could be attacking your own intelligence over mistakes or feeling like you can’t do something because of x, y, and z. In reality, how can you claim you can’t do something based on imaginary obstacles you’ve created for yourself while also not giving it a chance? You collect all of these negative views which is the result of your self-criticism. Instead, you need to celebrate all of your successes instead of minimizing them just because of minor mistakes that make you feel inadequate. Celebrating your success-minor or major- can affect you greatly. Life can be rocky, but highlighting all that you’ve accomplished gives you a sense of self-worth. If you truly do want to correct your mistakes, then go easy on yourself and choose where you want to improve if you truly want to get better. What’s the point of belittling yourself and wallowing in your mistakes if you’re not going to take the time to fix it?
Daily Affirmations
Affirmations are positive statements that can help you get past self-sabotaging and negative thoughts that keep you down. Some people may think repeating positive affirmations daily won’t do much. Think of it like this, you go to the gym weekly and keep up with your routine so you can have a healthy body and be the best you physically. You can do the same thing but for your mental psyche. Positive affirmations can shift your way of thinking greatly just like how negative thoughts can. The thing is, both negative and positive affirmations can become self-fulfilling prophecies, but it depends on which path you decide to take. Just like how talking yourself into believing you’re not good enough can drag you down in your personal life, doing the opposite through positive affirmation can be just as influential and helpful. You are what you think so don’t dwell on negative thoughts about yourself.
Stop Making Negative Assumptions About Yourself
Making assumptions allow you to believe in something without actual evidence. Making assumptions is always dangerous when it comes on to your self-esteem and confidence. It’s in our human nature to make sure we avoid pain or failure so we tend to come up with assumptions that prevent us from taking certain risks so we don’t have to face those unwelcoming feelings we try so hard to avoid. You tell yourself you’re not smart enough to accomplish a certain goal. Where’s the proof that that’s true? You can tell yourself that you’re a failure, but are you really failing in every aspect of your life or are you just exaggerating out of fear? You can easily combat these negative assumptions by challenging them. Once you challenge these assumptions you can see that you’re just creating false generalizing and need to see the actual progress you’re making. By continue to indulge in these negative assumptions you just make it harder for yourself to come out on top. Challenge these assumptions by asking yourself; Why am I assuming this? Under what conditions is this assumption true? You will find yourself making new assumptions. Then, challenge the new assumptions as you did with the old. Continue this process until all assumptions are addressed. You will see that you found some assumptions to not hold true.
Stop Assuming What Others are Thinking
We tend to base our validation on what other people think about us. Especially if we hold those people to such a high standard and put them on a pedestal. We tend to mostly do this with our personal relationships and work relationships. You may be hanging around your significant other and see that they decided to check their phone for a bit. Your inner voice might tell you that they’re feeling bored being around you. Guess what happens next? You end up feeling bad about yourself and feel like your partner might always bored around you based on this little action. When you take something so little like that and overanalyze it, you stomp on your confidence. Remember that you minimize your self-esteem and confidence. Not anyone else. So instead of always assuming the worse just let it go and stop overthinking. Overthinking just leads to more damage. You could even possibly bruise your relationships because you believe assumptions that were made without actual communication with the other party. In the case of feeling like your significant other is bored of you will lead you to spin false stories in your head such as; they’re probably messaging someone else because they’re so bored of you. Stop it. If there’s no actual evidence then there’s no need to worry.
It’s important to recognize the way we speak about ourselves. It can really influence the way you live your life. It may be hard to get rid of those negative thoughts you’ve developed over a period of time, but these simple tools will put you on the right path to building your self-confidence. Only you can improve your self-esteem. Also, try not to rely on validation from others. It’s important that we all take the time to appreciate ourselves and the qualities we have instead of constantly bagging on ourselves.