How you talk to yourself determines your happiness and success
Today I was reminded of a line that my partner’s brother, Sales Trainer and Speaker Chris Helder, uses — which you may have heard before, but merits repeating –
“The most important words we say all day are the words we say to ourselves, about ourselves when we are alone by ourselves.”
Boy, isn’t that the truth.
Our mind is going a mile a minute, and since we are often our own worse critic, it’s easy to let our mind fill us up right quickly with how silly, stupid, ignorant and dumb we are.
That reminds me….I have to thank a dear friend (and former client) of mine, Whitney Dickinson-Anderson who once caught me in the act of self-deprecation.
I don’t remember what I’d done or said to provoke the comment, but in response I said something like “That was stupid. Shut up, Tshombe.”
“Don’t say that,” Whitney said.
“Oh, sorry. I wasn’t telling you to shut up. I was telling me to shut up.”
“That’s what I mean. Don’t tell my friend, Tshombe, to shut up.”
Wow. What a lesson. I would never tell anyone else they were stupid or tell them to shut up. Why would I treat myself so poorly?
I just opened to Denis Waitley‘s short essay entitled “The Most Important Meetings You’ll Ever Attend Are the Meetings You Have with Yourself,” which is one of a hundred other articles compiled and edited by David Riklan in a collection called 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life
One of Denis Waitley’s treasures include this thought:
Be aware of the silent conversation you have with yourself. Are you a nurturing coach or a critic? Do you reinforce your own success or negate it? Are you comfortable saying to yourself “That’s more like it.” “Now we’re in the groove.” “Things are working out well.” “I am reaching my financial goals.” “I’ll do it better next time.”
Yes, it’s easy to get bogged done in what’s not working, but starting down that path is a never-ending downward spiral. One of the keys to mastering our mind (rather than it having mastery over us) is to choose to focus on what is working and do more of that.
Along a similar vein, I had a discussion with a man who did not like the town where he was living. He felt stuck there, with no quick way out, and found himself depressed and frustrated. This person was on a list that would allow him to move to a larger city with more resources, but since he was number 40 on the list, it could be months or even years before he made it to the top of the list.
You probably can relate to feeling stuck in a certain situation and seeing no easy way out.
I asked him what he liked about this town. After a very short time, he came up with several things that he not only liked, but loved (his word) about the town. Not only that, we came up with several creative ways he could do more of what he loved and help others at the same time.
You could see the light bulbs of possibility come on!
He released himself of his limited worldview and found in its place freedom and joy. His life situation was no longer a place to feel frustrated or stuck. Instead, he learned to focus on what’s-working-energy, releasing himself from the prison of his mind.
What words are you saying to yourself?
Are you concentrating on what’s amazing about you and what is working in your life?
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Image Credit: Self-portrait (“mono“) of Victor Bezrukov, used under a Creative Commons license
