Welcome to the Grow Inward Podcast, I am your host Adrian Petrillo.
Today I would like to talk about something that is very important and worth paying closer attention to, which is self-talk and the quality of internal dialogue that you entertain on a regular basis. Self-talk can have a significant impact on so many different aspects of your quality of life, not the least of which being the level to which you are able to effectively shift your mindset.
I want to really encourage you to give yourself a great deal of grace, forgiveness, and understanding, as you explore this in your own self, and I would like to share some different ways that you can do this. Gaining some perspective is incredibly important and helpful when facing some of the more challenging aspects of ourselves, and our often very unforgiving mind, and this is the purpose at the very heart of this episode.
As you begin to turn your attention inward, your negative internal dialogue can often become glaringly obvious in very short order. If you don't sit down and quiet your mind very often, or ever, the moment that you finally try to do this, you may be surprised at all of the negativity that can be wrapped up in your moment to moment thoughts.
It can be quite confronting to realize just how much your own internal dialogue is actually working against you, rather than working for you. It isn't always easy to accept that you have such a negative voice inside of you that seems to have a mind of it's own, it can be quite judgmental and more than happy to repeat all the different ways that you or others aren't good enough?
This unfortunately isn't uncommon, in fact, I would say it is very common. As you can imagine, this internal dialogue can have a profound effect on your thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions, of yourself and others, and the world around you. This dialogue plays a significant role in your daily experience of life and the world you live in!
Fortunately, this is not the only part of you, and it is not one that you have to continually entertain. You always have a positive and supportive side as well, which can have an equally significant impact on your overall experience, with your help and attention. This is where you must work on strengthening yourself from within, and learning how to influence that dialogue in a way that empowers and inspires you. You ultimately must learn to be the driver of your thoughts, not the passenger!
Let's be real here for a moment though, you aren't going to be 100% successful all of the time, but you can make a massive shift in this inner dialogue, and your life, by tuning your attention toward becoming the gatekeeper over your thoughts and emotions. Make a commitment to yourself to never let another thoughts slip through without your explicit consent. This is the goal, but make no mistake, this will be a challenge!
We are complex creatures, and our inner dialogue has many years of experiences and emotions that have helped to form, shape, and strengthen it over time. That is why it can be so challenging to overcome, because you have to undo many of these programs that have been allowed to run for so long. They can become deeply engrained and almost invisible to us over time, these are part of that vast ocean beneath your conscious mind.
These things don't make you a bad person, they just illustrate how complicated your inner world can be and offer a great reason to begin paying much closer attention. Many people scoff at the idea of inner work or spiritual work, thinking that is isn't necessary or important. I understand how it might appear on the surface to some, but it's important to remember what we talked about earlier.
Our own thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions of the world may not be a completely accurate representation of reality. These are all colored by a complicated web of our experiences and emotions, and although they are very real to us, it is entirely possible that we have never even attempted to view our experience through a different perspective. If not, would it be fair to say that we could be mistaken or misleading ourselves? I will leave that determination up to you?
It can be very easy to go through our entire life without really questioning what is going on within us. It's certainly much easier to just let things be as they are, and there is nothing wrong with that approach if you find that it suits you. I have personally always felt a strong pull to explore my potential and inner world. I know we are capable of so much, and so I want to find ways to continually improve and grow so I can experience the parts of me that are not so easily explained.
As much as I want to be better and to grow, that pesky inner dialogue is constantly trying to weasel its way into my thoughts and beliefs. It took me quite some time to actively notice it, and it is important to notice it if we ever hope to do anything about it. Meditation has been a great tool to this end, in my opinion.
I believe the power of this tool is in the training of our focus, which I discuss in my meditation podcast episode here, and also in this blog post on the subject available here. When we begin paying closer attention to our thoughts and learning to let them go, that skill will go a very long way toward helping you overcome all the of the persistent negative dialogue running in our heads. It takes some time and patience, but eventually you just see it for what it is and are better able to let it go.
In addition to learning to let these thoughts go more effectively, we can also counter this with new thoughts and beliefs and find ways to begin replacing the negative dialogue with empowering dialogue. The process isn't overly difficult, but the retraining of the mind and crossing the threshold of lasting change is not easy. I have worked on this a long time and I still struggle with some things, but I have also overcome many others, so it is possible and this does work.
One of the best ways to begin this journey of improving your own self-talk is to use a journal. I recommend you start keeping a daily thought journal. Every time you have a negative thought, you should write it down. Do this for an entire day or week and just catalog all of these thoughts in writing so you can review this list at the end of the day or week.
Once you have this list, try going through each of these thoughts or beliefs and ask these questions: Is this true? What proof do I have that this is true? What proof do I have that this isn't true? Just take some time and go through your list and start documenting what is and isn't true. Maybe some things are, but most of them probably aren't and can be easily dismantled with this process of asking a simple question.
If there is a thought that is true, and you want to change that thought, then write down what you would like to experience in place of this thought. Once you have a new thought or belief, try attaching a strong emotion to it that you can feel. Try to experience the thought or belief with this powerful emotion that it will give you, be sure to experience this as if it is already true and do this for a minute or two, or however long feels good to you.
After doing all of this, keep your journal with you and take another day to monitor your thoughts. Each time you have a negative thought come up, review your list of what you would like to change this thought or belief to, and take a moment to close your eyes and experience that thought instead using the emotion that you have attached to it.
This will not be an overnight process, you may need to do this for several weeks and up to a month before you notice significant changes. But think about what you are doing, you are actively interrupting these thought patterns and beliefs and introducing new thoughts and beliefs. While this may not seem effective in the short term, you are training yourself to do this differently and over time this will have an impact on those thoughts and beliefs.
Another important tool that will help you on this path is meditation. This is helpful because it will help you to focus your attention and awareness of your thoughts. Not only that, but you will reap all of the other benefits of mediation as well. This will not only be benefiting this exercise, it will help you in other areas of your life as well.
These activities in combination can have a profound effect on your experience, and you will learn a great deal about yourself along the way. If you are able to do this for 30 days or so, you also may be finding yourself standing firmly within a new habit that is highly beneficial for you in a number of different ways. This is working on several different aspects of yourself that are not entirely obvious as you do this, but they will present themselves to you gradually over time.
At the very least, you will definitely learn some valuable information about yourself and the inner dialogue that is a regular part of your life. You will know right away if you are willing to accept this or if you simply must work your way through it to improve it and move forward with something more positive and beneficial instead.
This really is a great exercise in a number of different ways, and one that I highly recommend you at least try. Learn something new about yourself, and see what you can accomplish over this next month. What have you got to lose, except for removing some potentially negative thought patterns that are doing nothing more than holding you back?
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Until next time, never underestimate the power you have within you, and keep growing inward.
