If you're like me, some days you get what you want, and some days you don't. On the days when you don't, what do you do then? What kind of things do you tell yourself? (how healthy or how self-denigrating is your self-talk?) Do you say things like "well, these things happen and everyone has good days and bad days"? Or do you say things to yourself like, "well, you really screwed up this time"? Or, call yourself names and tell yourself why you deserved for this to happen, or "this is how my luck ALWAYS goes"?

 

You listen to, and you believe every single thing you tell yourself! So, given a choice between believing:

 

1. you're terrible, your luck is terrible, you deserve all terrible things, it’s too hard, you can NEVER ..{whatever} and you're a terrible screwup; or

 

2. you're a good and decent and valuable person, and these things happen sometimes, tomorrow’s a new day, problems are there to be solved, it’s a challenge and You're UP FOR IT!  ...

 

Which style of self-talk do you think will give you a more positive outcome?

 

Sometimes when I suggest to people that they get to CHOOSE what they tell themselves, and what they believe, they respond by saying, "yeah, but all that positive thinking c--p... that's all it is, it's not the truth, and when I try to tell myself the "positive" lies, I know the stories are lies. I feel dishonest. So you WANT me to LIE to myself?"

 

Well, my response is this. Your mind listens to what you say and what you think. Your mind is a GOAL-SEEKING automated device. YOU get to tell it what to go after. It is deep-programmed that what you think about is what you want, and it goes after it. If you think “I’m a piece of dog-stuff” your mind thinks that’s what you want to believe, that this is your GOAL, and it sets about proving this mind-set to you. Your mind is programmed to turn that into a goal, and to achieve it. So you can set about changing what you think about, or you can keep getting the negative results you’ve been getting.

 

If you want to seriously have a joyful life, and that’s not what your life looks like, you’re going to need to do some serious work on the way you think, the things you tell yourself about the way the world works, and what you CHOOSE to focus your attention on, all the time.

 

I have to admit that I didn’t start getting positive results of any sort in my life, my life was a series of crises, was one disaster after another, until I started telling myself that I deserved better. Until I started working on my beliefs (and yes, I did some on my own, and some with hypnosis working with a hypnotherapist, and some with psychological therapy.)

 

And I didn’t seriously start having JOY in my life until I was willing to let go of the self-sabotaging habits and beliefs I had about how Unjoyful life is, and how undeserving I was of Joy…. Not to mention the belief I had that if you got too happy, “the Gods” would pull the rug out from under you. That’s a REAL joy killer, there! But you know what? Even THAT one can be overcome.