Self-talk is one of the most important things when it comes to your mental health. I know that everyone deals with negative self-talk daily. What most people don’t know is that you condition yourself to speak kindly to yourself. For a lot of people, (me included) negative self-talk was my default setting. I would think horrible things about myself and talk to myself in a way that I would never talk to someone else. I didn’t even acknowledge how hurtful and negative it was, I just thought it and figured that’s how everyone thinks and talks about themselves. Training yourself to speak kindly to yourself takes time but the benefits are worth it.

Our thoughts are powerful, and what we think, we will eventually believe even if it’s not true. The next time you have a negative thought about yourself, I challenge you to challenge the thought. For example, “I will never accomplish xyz, so I’m not going to try”. That is an example of a negative thought that is also projecting negative outcomes on the future. If this was a thought I was having, I would stop and think about the statement. A way you can challenge this thought is “The only person standing in my way from starting xzy is me. Time is going to pass either way, I might as well try xzy. If people don’t like xzy, whats the worst that could happen”? Breaking down the thought with rational thinking has made such a difference in how I approach life. I am doing things I’ve always wanted to do, even if it is scary, embarrassing etc. Other people care so little about what anyone else is doing, stop letting your negative self-talk hold you back. Its ok if you are a little embarrassed, again, what is the worst thing that could happen? Life is not meant to be comfortable, the second we get comfortable is the second we stop improving.

I started my running journey last February. As I’ve started running longer distances, I’ve noticed that around mile 4, my mind starts to go negative. I start having thoughts like “why are you spending two hours on the treadmill, you should be with your child or at work with your husband”, or “you have to be on this thing for another hour and a half, there is no way you can do that today, you can’t handle it”. The second those thoughts come in my mind, my speed decreases and I get a pit in my stomach. Once I started challenging those thoughts, my mind and body felt stronger, and I can keep pushing forward and stay focused on the rest of my run. I challenge those thoughts with, “you are on this treadmill for two hours because you are challenging yourself to get stronger so you can be a better person, parent & wife. Your son is safe and happy at daycare, your husband is more than capable of running the restaurant without you for a while, you are safe, you are running on a treadmill right now, that is all you need to focus on”. It is hard at first, but it gets easier the more you do it. This tactic can apply to every area of your life where you notice you are having unwanted, negative thoughts.

If you are in the service industry, this can be so hard because you have so much going on at once. Some of the negative thoughts I would have frequently on serving shifts were “look at so and so, they are doing such a good job, I could never handle that many tables” (even though we had the same size section) or “those people look rich, they are going to be too much for me to handle, I should switch tables with another server, what if they want a bottle of wine, I won’t open it correctly (even though I’ve probably opened 300 bottles of wine before and I know the right way to do it). Some things I would say to myself in these situations are “Abby, you can handle just as many tables as any other server, you just need to slow down and pay attention” or “What if they do want a bottle of wine? You know how to open and serve wine, you are prepared for your job, you are safe”. Once I started doing this, I became a much better server. I kept reminding myself that I was qualified to be a server and that I was confident in my abilities.

I’ve mentioned in other posts about pretending to be a confident person when you are feeling down. That is a powerful form of self-talk too. If I get anxious walking up to a new table, I think to myself, “would Beyonce be anxious to wait tables? I don’t think so. So, I shouldn’t be anxious either”. It sounds silly but it always works for me.

I hope this post was helpful and I hope you approach each situation with a newfound habit of seeing things through a positive lense. Practice radical self-love and self-talk and see how your life improves immediately.