Welcome to day 7 of my 30 day Blogging Challenge – A series called From Zero Confidence To Feeling More Fabulous in 30 Days. If you missed Day One’s post you can read it here and can follow the series through from there. I’m going to be writing about confidence and each day sharing some tips for building your confidence slowly. The tools and hints/tips I’m sharing can be used for you or your coaching clients but for now I want you to focus on you. Building your confidence can have a great impact on your business and life. You will be amazed at what you can do when you feel more confident.
Yesterday I shared a story about dealing with your inner critic. Today I’m going to walk you through 7 tips for turning around negative self talk
Take a moment to notice the world around you, i.e. The news with its negative stories, virus outbreaks, poverty, politics (don’t worry I’m not going there!) Even when you go on Facebook you may find a countdown to the weekend where people are wishing their lives away. (If that’s you then stop it now! If you don’t like your job/week then do something about it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have enough money to leave your job, or whatever else is holding you there, you can still set a plan in place with daily action steps to help you to leave. Just the act of doing that in itself will make you feel different about it. (that’s a whole new blog post for another time – I’m getting off my soap-box now!) Just remember life is for living, not counting down!!!)
With all of these things in our environment though it’s no wonder we can start to feel like there’s no hope. This negativity can really start to have an impact and change our mood. Here are 7 tips to help you with this;
1. Notice
In order to create change we first need to notice – so I want you to notice how you think, feel and behave. Notice the language you are using to yourself,the ‘I should do this’, ‘I must go with that person to .. ‘, ‘I never understand how to do this social media thing’, ‘I can’t learn that, I’m too old, too young, too tired etc – fill in the gaps’.
Notice those things you say like ‘I can’t’, ‘I couldn’t possibly’, I’d never be able to do that’, ‘I’m stupid’, ‘I’m rubbish at..’ It can become so much a part of us that we don’t even realise we’re doing it. Make a note of how often it crops up, what time of day, in what situations (either a mental note or on paper)
2. Challenge
When you catch yourself – DON’T judge – just notice
Then challenge it – should, must, never, can’t – who says? Let’s be honest there are always going to be things in life that aren’t our favourite things to do but check in with yourself to see if you’re doing it out of duty, whether it needs to be done and whether it needs to be done by you.
Whenever you spot yourself saying something negative turn it around into a positive. We often generalise too, ‘everyone is better at this than me’ for example, so when you hear yourself do it – challenge it.
- The weather is ‘always’ miserable Always??
- I ‘never’ win anything ‘Never??’
- I really ‘should’ or ‘must’ do that ‘but’.. ‘Should?? Must?? Who says?’
3. Gather evidence
I asked you to start working on writing your strengths list in Day ___’s blog post this is a way of helping you to start gathering evidence of when you are good enough. It could be that you’re great at playing golf, or creative with clay or brilliant at bringing out the best in people. Start gathering evidence of your fabulousness!
4. Play the ‘What If’ game.
When you say you can’t do x, y, z play the ‘What If’ game. What if you could? This moves you to a place of possibility where you can then consider how you CAN.
5. Read your compliments journal pages
Go back to your compliments journal that I talked about on Day 3 and remind yourself of the positive things and sow those seeds, replacing the seeds of self-doubt. Shut that internal chatterbox up that wants to criticise you!
6. Be grateful
When you write out what you’re grateful for life becomes so much more positive. You start to selectively look for the positive instead of life passing you by. There are so very many things to be grateful for. Write a list of 5-10 things each day that you’re grateful for. Set it up as a regular daily practice and tell me the difference it makes to you.
7. Write out an affirmation or a mantra
An affirmation is a positive statement in the present that helps you view things more positively, “I love my body”, “I love being this weight”, “I succeed in all that I do”, “I am good at my job”, “I’m a great Mum” etc. I’ve got another post about affirmations here that you might like to read.
We know that thoughts lead to feelings that lead to behaviour so let’s change those thoughts now.
Changing our inner dialogue takes time, but you CAN do it. Just take a step at a time and treat yourself in the way you would your best friend – with kindness.
Today’s Task
Today I’ve shared some tips today on how you can turn your negative language around. Choose one tip to work on and then leave a comment in the box below telling me which tip you’ve chosen and why.
Ps – A couple of people have been finding the 10% challenge on Day 4 a little tricky, where I said about boosting your confidence just by 10%. A 10% increase may be an intangible thing to measure so it’s just a guide. It’s about stepping up a little, so being a little bit braver with something, so let’s say you want to start blogging daily, the first step up might be to blog once! It’s finding something that you can start or take the first step on, then you move the next step and so on and before you know it you will be surprised by how far you’ve come.
Want some added fun and support? Pop your info in the form below and you’ll get free access to my private Facebook group – Confidence Rocks for the duration of the challenge. Ps – when you sign up you’ll get sent a link to the group page – you’ll need to request to join.
Are you studying to be a Coach or ready to get serious about your coaching business?
If you want to boost your confidence in your business skills come and join my Coaching Rocks Bootcamp programme starting next Tuesday. I take you through a fabulous and simple 12 step blueprint to get your business up, running and earning. Be quick – spaces are limited. Grab your spot now while you can.
I love this Ruby, and I think these are really valuable tips around negative self-talk. 10% boost in confidence can make a difference on a daily basis, I have my strengths list but it all seems a bit “braggy”. How can I change my self-talk around this?
I think the key here is that you’re listing your strengths, not bragging in the way that you would if you were telling everyone how amazing you are. Everyone has their own strengths, one of your strengths is teaching people about blogging, one of mine is helping people to be confident with who they are, being themselves in their business. Are we bragging? No, it’s just a way of reminding ourselves of our strengths as often we can’t see them ourselves and have to have them pointed out to us. We have the assumption that just because we can do something and we find it easy everyone else must too, but the truth is they don’t. When you feel you are ‘bragging’ ask yourself if that’s true. Flip it then to the opposite that you’re just reminding yourself of your strengths. The fact that you’re enquiring about it (a bit like I said in my blog post about arrogance) would suggest you’re not
I didn’t think I did any negative self-talk but it seems that I do it without even realising!
*note to self – must do better*
I love that you’ve realised that, thanks for sharing. We’re all a work in progress
Great post again Ruby. I know I have negative self talk as this is an area that I have been working on for the past 20 years but it’s great to have it brought back to the front my mind as it is always work in progress.
I’ve recently started using affirmations. My one for just now is I CAN do this!
Affirmations are great! Some people hate them though but they do work for many of my clients. Ah I’ve just seen you said you’re a work in progress. I just said exactly that in a previous reply! They say the biggest room is the room for improvement. Here’s to switching out that negative self talk for more positive things instead
I love this series! Given that I function on a healthy dose of self confidence!
I am a strong advocate of self affirmation! I have learnt that if you don’t believe in yourself, it will be very difficult, if not downright impossible to convince anyone to believe in you. In my books, it’s not being pompous or arrogant, but rather it is showing a real knowledge of who you and who you can be.
Ah thanks Jane! I agree, self affirmation is really powerful, although I know a lot of people don’t feel comfortable with it.
Hi Ruby,
I really enjoyed reading that and the point about listing your strengths. I’m only just getting comfortable accepting that because it’s been said over and over again. So for me, it’s working on receiving as well. Thank you x
Definitely Viv. Keep working on saying ‘thank you’. Treat those compliments as a beautiful gift
I’m setting up another little journal. Working from the front are business tasks and blog ideas (the starting point for my 10%) and working from the back I’m doing a page each day on 5 -10 things that made me smile and setting a mantra for the day. That way I hope that when I go back to my list to add to it each day, I’ll keep seeing my mantra and hopefully reinforcing the positives. I used to do this as while back but got out of the habit, now I’m wondering why!
I love that idea Jenny, I do a similar thing with a new app I’m playing around with called Grid Diary but there’s still nothing quite like writing things in a pretty book!