You're Thinking the Wrong Way! The Importance of Self-Talk

Alt-text: Women in a white tank top lying in bed, staring off blankly and looking concerned. She is captured by a camera spiraling down towards her, seemingly to add dramatic effect.

Do you remember that one comment someone made about your appearance that still manifests as an insecurity to this day? Yeah… me too. Thinking about how you look is often dismissed as shallow, but in my experience, emphasizing how you present yourself to the world can be empowering and, in many cases, integral to reaching your full potential in life. 

Personally...

My self-image has continuously evolved, marked by periods of varying awareness of how the world saw me and differing levels of effort in reshaping that perception. However, it's impossible to truly gauge how the world perceives you – you can never survey every person around you for an accurate assessment. As a result, many of our perceptions about ourselves are driven by imagination, and they are influenced by overt comments and subtle gestures that people have made towards us. But, it doesn’t have to be that way; we have the power to use our inner monologue to our advantage. This is known as positive self-talk, and I’d like to share my own experience to prove that using it purposefully can profoundly transform other aspects of your life. 

Because our thoughts are such a pervasive force in our lives, it is important that they work for us instead of against us. I reached a point where I knew I couldn’t continue living with that way my brain was operating. In most of my adolescent life I internalized nearly every conversation I overheard. Unfortunately, I put people's opinions and beliefs on a pedestal – often more than they deserved. Even casual off-handed remarks made their way into my psyche, ultimately changing my perception in a way that was detrimental to my confidence.

Uh Oh

I had more information pouring into my impressionable brain than I knew what to do with. So, obviously, I could only come to one sane conclusion: OBSESS OVER EVERY POSSIBLE OPINION AND METICULOUSLY CURATE MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE ACCORDINGLY. YAY!!! *jazz hands* If my mom were to say something negative about herself, I would, of course,  automatically extend that criticism to myself – because the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, am I right?

Naturally, I tasked myself with the duty of following the beauty standard as best as I could, as a little girl. In reality though, I never took tangible steps to make myself present better to the world, I would just beat myself up over the fact that I didn't naturally adhere to the beauty standard perfectly. Teachers, friends, parents, and grocery store clerks were unknowingly feeding me fuel for my own self-loathing.

But, worst of all… I had an older brother. DUN DUN DUNNNNN! Anyone who has an older brother will understand the severity and importance of this fact of my life. Day after day, he launched insult after insult my way. Since he was older, I assumed he had known better than me about everything. So if he said I was annoying, then that must be true, right? Lacking both confidence and discernment skills, I was a prime target – this was a recipe for disaster.

Over the years, I grew extremely insecure and self-conscious. For years, I tried to hide my true self to avoid being perceived in a bad light, constantly running from the imagined judgement of others. This meant I was unable to express myself freely, which led to me losing sight of my authentic identity.

How I Saw the Light at the End of the Tunnel

During high school, specifically when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, I had so much time to myself that I recognized how miserable I was feeling. With that, I realized it was due to the intense and inescapable self-loathing that I was experiencing. Whether I was with people I knew personally or consuming content from people on the internet – people that I didn’t even know well enough to make an honest assessment of their actual lives – I couldn't do anything or go anywhere without comparing myself to them and measuring myself against their standards. This miserable feeling would only be able to be fixed through internal work

With a little Google search, I came across a method that might just "rewire" my brain. With the knowledge of how thoughts came about, through patterns, I knew I had to intentionally and repeatedly change the thoughts I was having. I would stop a negative thought dead in its tracks and replace it with a positive thought. These old, negative thought patterns were deeply ingrained in my brain, so it took close to a year of following this process to change the way that my brain thought about myself. This systematic way of thinking allowed me to think about my life and myself in a much better way than I ever had before. I was finally free to express myself without retroactive fear or embarrassment.

The Outcome

Once I felt free in myself, I was able to understand my true wants and needs in life. Only after retraining the way my brain thinks was I able to get excited about the development of my life. I finally knew what I wanted to do and I was unapologetic in pursuit of those things. I now know that I want to become a lawyer when I enter the workforce. I also know I don't exercise because I feel inadequate anymore, I exercise because I like it and it makes me feel good. On top of that, my day to day life is far more enjoyable because my thoughts are generally happy or neutral.

Instead of thinking, “Oh no, I have to work out later today”, I would think “Yay, I get to workout today”. Or in the past I might have thought, “Ugh I have to do homework”, rather I was able to get excited to prepare for the next day of classes through homework, it is now a relieving experience instead of a dreadful one. These examples may sound cheesy, but really think about it! There are things in life that we don't necessarily want to do, but we have to do them. Imagine reframing your way of thinking about yourself, you will naturally reframe the way you think about the world around you too. If you value yourself more, you will value the things that make you a better person more, like working towards goals in fitness, academics, or work. Life should be enjoyable, don't disable yourself.

When you think of yourself as beautiful, strong, and worthy; you value your outcome much more. When you feel important in your own right, you are excited to expand your horizons and fight for what you want. Another feature of your brain is that it likes to be right, so if you tell yourself you can do something, you are more likely to succeed at that thing. In contrast, if you tell yourself that you can't do something, you will be less likely to succeed at that thing. Please, don't shoot yourself in the foot – so to speak – with the way that you think about yourself, you have lots of potential that can be reached when you have a positive disposition.

Our brains are unique and complex, but there are ways that we can use the way they work to our advantage.