You want to be a confident person, right? You’re not alone. Whether you are standing in front of a crowd to give a speech, in an interview, heading for a test or sitting down to take an exam, we want to be confident and feel good in our own skin. A lack of confidence can be so painful, it can influence every area of your life.
A lack of confidence impacts your performance, your emotions, and ultimately, it influences your self-talk. All anyone really wants is to lead a happy, healthy life. Part of achieving that requires a level of self-talk that supports that. This means your self-talk needs to be self-nurturing. We’re all just fighting to be our authentic selves in every area of our lives. That’s something that we all deserve, but it’s something we have to work toward. In order to grow, we need confidence. Confidence stems from hard work and an inner-belief in self. To achieve the latter, you must first learn to control your self-talk.
Let’s talk about five ways self-nurturing self-talk helps you grow as a person.
- Your Thoughts Don’t Own YouIt might be difficult to believe, but your thoughts don’t own you – you’re not the thoughts you think. However, your thoughts can heavily influence your behavior, especially if you’re unaware of them. There is an exciting opportunity here. With self-nurturing self-talk comes intention and mindfulness that helps you grow into the best version of yourself you can be.
It’s up to you to make decisions and react to situations in a way that aligns with your values. You can only do that based on how you perceive the situation. For example, you have made a mistake. It happens. You can react by cheering yourself on or you can react by putting yourself down. The self-nurturing self-talk is the former. That’s what is going to help you grow as a person. The latter is going to reduce your confidence and make it difficult for you to take risks and try again.
You will have opportunities daily to correct your thoughts. It’s up to you to respond to mistakes and failures encouragingly. It’s easier to learn the lesson and move forward when you encourage yourself.
- Increased PerformanceSelf-nurturing self-talk is going to boost your performance. Think about how you feel going into a big meeting, an interview or a public speaking engagement. It’s nerve-wracking, no doubt. However, when you choose self-nurturing self-talk you are encouraging yourself, you’re effectively coaching yourself to succeed.
- Self-BeliefA lot of people misunderstand positive self-talk. Self-nurturing self-talk isn’t just a case of butterflies, sugar, and rainbows. It’s about instilling a self-belief in yourself. You can hold yourself to a high standard, but also extend compassion if you don’t meet it or experience a hiccup. It’s really easy to allow your feelings or mood to taint your experiences and trigger a spate of negativity. Shaping your self-talk to be self-nurturing is going to help you deal with your emotions in a more maturely.
- TeamworkWhen you build yourself up with self-nurturing self-talk you build yourself up. A natural byproduct of this is that you build others up as well. It makes you a better teammate.
- The Bright Side of LifeThere are opportunities everywhere in this life. That can be scary, even if those opportunities are cool. It’s up to you to view those situations and opportunities as a cool challenge or to perceive them as a threat. It’s an active choice you can participate in. One comes from a place of fear, while the other comes from self-motivation.
Adopting self-nurturing self-talk is going to help you re-frame opportunities, to re-frame failure, and to dictate how you respond to them. This growth is going to take you to the next level.