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The self-talk that can take you from sabotage to success!
How we speak to ourselves can set the tone for not just our day, but our self-perception, understanding of the world around us, and overall level of happiness.
Sometimes, when we are trying to change this automatic self-talk, it can feel, well…hard. If you are used to being your biggest critic or best bad-guy, it can feel strange to relate to yourself differently.
Examples that help us to re-frame our self-talk with compassion and understanding can provide sign posts that you are on the right track. You may not be using these yet – but by being aware and actively replacing negative statements with any of the phrases or reflections below, you will be actively leading yourself to success.
1. One of the essential first steps in self-leadership is identifying and understanding your core values. When these are clear, they help you to make decisions that sit well with you – regardless of what anyone else thinks. If you are on the self-leadership track, you may find yourself asking -
“Which of these options aligns with my core values?
2. Motivation and action are essential elements of progress – but hard to sometimes cultivate and sustain! Recognising this is just as important, and strong self-leadership means you may ask yourself something like -
“I know I won’t always feel motivated, so how can I make sure I show up anyway?”
3. Self-Monitoring is an aspect of self-leadership that helps you maintain your momentum, adjust your course or change your goals. A reflection that might come up that indicates you are practising healthy self-monitoring could be -
“This doesn’t feel right…I wonder what is going on for me here and what I need to try instead?”
4. Cultivating grit and perseverance can be hard – it requires learning to be okay with failing. Knowing you are developing grit (rather than punishing yourself for a misstep!) can sound like -
“Setbacks happen. I’ll step back, learn what’s here to learn, look after myself and then keep going.”
5. The pinnacle of self-leadership is when it all comes together and you feel like your life is in flow. This is the culmination of all the hard work that comes from knowing yourself, and developing intentionality around living a life with purpose that is in line with your values. This is when you find yourself saying-
“I don’t know what it is, but I feel like everything is going in the right direction.”
You may notice the common element of the above phrases is the ‘checking in’ with curiosity. Instead of judging, berating or accusing ourselves (“I should have…”, “Why am I so….”, “I will never…”), self-leadership harnesses self-compassion and understanding to reflect on our unique selves and individual needs to guide us towards our goals.
So, this is a reminder to pay attention to how you talk to yourself both when you're winning and experience a momentary setback; and, a prompt to see how you can tweak it to be more compassionate and supportive of yourself.
If you need more help developing powerful self-talk on your self-leadership journey, and want a cheer squad along the way (who doesn’t!?), join our beautiful community on our socials – we’d love to have you.
Maike x