You’re the greatest influence on yourself. One of ways to prove this is how siblings, leaders and people in general, can be exposed to the exact circumstance and some flourish while others buckle. Just like me, there are a lot of things you tell yourself.
Some things you’ve told yourself enough times to start believing regardless of their veracity. What I tell myself directly affects my attitude toward something. It either hinders or enables me. My self talk at the beginning of the day has huge implications for how my day will be.
Being negative or positive is a choice. Attitude is largely influenced by self talk. What I tell myself. And more importantly, what I tell myself often.
My attitude is a significant contributor to how bad or good circumstance is. It is what I tell myself that tells every other area of my life how good or bad anything and everything is. With negative self talk everything will be exponentially worse that it really is.
On the other hand, when something is great (even bad) a positive self talk and the subsequent positive attitude, will mean I experience better. I can be uptight and negative about a lot of things. Life and circumstance present me endless choices daily.
My challenge is to be realistic. Because I’m generally an optimist, I see more possibility than what could go wrong. Does this mean I sometimes overestimate myself and the success of projects? Yes!
I would never, never, do anything unless I saw possibility. Possibility is a critical ingredient for any endeavour for me. Thus given the choice between negative and positive self talk, I’ll go with positive. If I fail, I’d rather fail with a great and positive attitude.
My attitude doesn’t necessary change the circumstance but changes me. In turn, my internal world either equips me or usurps the power to change environments I might be in.
Thus, we have to keep the power of self talk in mind. It has implications for us, at an individual level, affecting people around us. An even more sobering thought is that my self talk can filter to the scale of the people the enterprise I lead in.
#NoteToSelf: keep self talk in mind…