What You Can Do About Negative Self-Talk

By Glenn Hattem · May 4, 2009 · Filed in State of Mind

Overcoming Mental Obstacles

We all know the person who spends countless hours in the gym, yet is constantly frustrated by their inability to create significant changes in their muscle tone, or the person who tries to starve their body into shape, only to fail miserably as they fall back into another cycle of unhealthy weight gain. Then there’s the person who can’t even see themselves exercising or altering their eating habits simply because the task seems entirely daunting and overwhelming from the start. There are many complex reasons why people don’t succeed at getting and staying in shape. The most common obstacles are not lack of knowledge or will-power, but personal psychological roadblocks. That’s why you should take some time to examine your inner world closely, as it has more of an impact on your success in all areas of your life than you may realize.

Look, ALL of us want to be free from frustration, fear, and discouragement, and to simply have our dreams fulfilled. But maybe you, like a lot of people, just don’t believe in yourself enough to get through challenges (like the ones I pose to participants in my GET IT BACK system) OR perhaps you don’t think you deserve to look and feel great. Many of you have learned to tell yourself that being at the ideal level of physical fitness and health is for the other person, the lucky one whom nature blessed with the “right genes” or an extra dose of willpower and more money and free time. This is the destructive habit of negative self-talk, which we use to dis-empower ourselves with lines like, “I’ll never lose those 20 pounds, they’ve been there for years,” or “I’m just that skinny guy who was teased at school, I’ll always be a bean pole” or my personal favorites, “I’m just too lazy” or “not skilled enough.”

Depression is thought to be anger turned toward oneself, and A LOT of us experience this in one form or another at some point in our life. Even I went through a period of significant depression during the time surrounding my father’s bout with cancer and his passing, during which I could easily tell others what to do to be healthy, but I definitely wasn’t setting the example in my own life. In fact, I felt like a fraud. I couldn’t believe that, after all those years of experience, I was having such difficulty with my own weight and stress management. I loathed my older reflection in the mirror, and the fatigue and extra layer of fat and despair only validated I was in a downward cycle. That is, until I finally made the choice to change my world and push through whatever obstacles crossed my path. I had to start living again, because I had already tried the alternative, and I didn’t want to be there any longer. Actually, I couldn’t take it ANYMORE!

Shortly before he died from lung cancer a little over a year ago, my dad told me that “Life was for the living, and death was for the dying.” You could say that sounds a bit cliche, but here’s what I took from this. We are not stagnant energy. We are either moving forward and improving or we are decaying before our time. There’s no maintenance! I don’t have a magic wand to make ALL your mental obstacles disappear, but as a coach, I don’t want to see you drop out of living your full potential because you feel low or defeated, or because of negative self-talk that makes you feel your circumstances are just stacked too high against you. Let me point you in the right direction with a few helpful tips below.

A few tips to help when things get tough:

Practice listening to your thoughts as if you’re watching someone else talk in a movie, quite interesting perhaps, but it’s just a movie. It’s not YOU.

Try to avoid “what if” and “I should have” thoughts. If they pop up, let them go immediately. Don’t dwell on them.

Get the “The Art of Happiness” by the Dalai Lama, which you can either download from itunes or purchase as a book from Amazon. I like to listen to it at night on my ipod before I go to sleep. For me, what a wake-up call!

Use affirmations and practice positive thinking! Think of negative habitual thoughts as a river that, with work, you can re-channel. If you are feeling overwhelmed with responsibilities and constantly reacting to outside circumstances, try saying this out loud to yourself: “Today I am increasing my ability to respond.”

You can, of course, use GET IT BACK, our 4-week system as an anchor in your life. Realize that this is not just a quick book to read, it’s an empowering tool you can use to climb out of the trenches. Even though it may not feel like it sometimes, decide that this is a part of your life where you will feel strong and confident.

The most important thing is that you push on through those doubts; don’t listen to your internal negative chatter. That’s all it is, chatter. I want you to unlock your higher self that’s hidden deep beneath years of disappointments and painful frustrations. The real you is stronger than your self-doubts. With time and practice, these self-doubts will diminish by themselves.

You can always contact me if you are investigating options to pull you out of your rut and need a little support. I will arm you with the right questions to ask so you can make an educated decision before you invest ANY of your limited resources of time and money. There’s a lot of great tools and resources out there, but you might have to wade through a bit of garbage to find the right path.