If you believe you can and if you believe you can’t, you’re right.
-Henry Ford
How you think influences the way you act and feel in major ways. Negative beliefs about yourself hold you back more certainly than external forces can. You actually have enormous control over what you think. It’s a matter of turning old habits of negative thinking into new practices of positive beliefs. Doing this will improve your confidence and empower you to achieve your goals.
Negative beliefs fall into two categories: self-criticism and worry.
The Problem with Self-criticism:
It doesn’t matter whether self-criticism addresses the past or the present or self-doubt raises concerns about the future. Negative thinking always undermines you. Beating yourself up about regrets from the past distracts you from what you need to focus on in the present and brings you down. Doubt in your abilities saps your energy and confidence and holds you back. The expectation that you’ll fail inhibits you from attempting new things. It’s hard to succeed if you are plagued by negative thinking.
It may seem that negative thinking serves a protective function. Many of us were raised with the notion that criticism is necessary for success. We believe that focusing on what we do wrong will prevent us from making the same mistakes again. It can also feel like self-criticism protects us from attacks from others. If we catch what we do wrong first, we may be able to correct it before someone else notices. If we criticize ourselves aloud, others will know we’re already aware that we’ve done something wrong and may refrain from blaming us.
Of course it’s important to learn from your mistakes and it may be appropriate to acknowledge them to others. You just don’t need to beat yourself up. It’s much more effective to calmly notice an error and then focus on what you need to do to correct the problem.
How to Change Your Negative Self-talk to Positive Beliefs:
I am often surprised at how unconscious my coaching clients are of their negative self-talk. The first step toward replacing your negative thinking with positive beliefs is to pay close attention to what is going on between your ears. Monitor your thought content for critical self-statements like, “You idiot!” or “How could you DO that???” Listen carefully to the words that come out of your mouth.
Notice when you are harsh on yourself and ask gently, “Is that appropriate?” If your self-criticism habit is firmly entrenched you will probably reply with an emphatic “Yes!” Then ask yourself how you feel when you treat yourself so meanly. If you are honest with yourself, you will notice that you feel deflated or discouraged or some other unhappy feeling.
Now, gently correct that thought or statement. Tell yourself, “Just because I did that, doesn’t mean I’m an idiot,” or “It would have been better if I had done that differently, but beating myself up isn’t going to help anything.”
At the beginning, you may need to watch out for beating yourself up for being mean to yourself: “You idiot! There you go again! What’s WRONG with you? You’ll never learn to be kind to yourself!” Use humor when old habits of negativity reassert themselves: “Oops! There you go again!” Or, you could even say something like, “Sweetheart, you do not deserve to treat yourself that way. Life is too short for such cruelty!”
As you correct your negative thinking begin to replace it with positive beliefs. If you do something you are unhappy with, ask yourself, “What can I do to fix this?” or “What is the learning here?” Encourage yourself by affirming that you’ll do better next time. Over time you will change the habit of negativity to the habit of positive, encouraging thinking. As you do this, you will empower yourself to act free of the fear of self-castigation should things not turn out exactly as you would like them to. You will also feel much more confident and self-accepting. All of which, of course, will help you to achieve your goals and make your good life better.
Jeannette Samanen, Ph.D.
Jeannette’s professional development began with graduate school at the University of Oregon. Her first post-doctoral position was at the Boston University School of Medicine where, as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology), where she specialized in stress management and behavioral medicine. Jeannette has had over 30 years of experience as a life coach and psychologist and derives great pleasure from helping clients transform their lives for the better.