As a Life and Business Coach, Anna Healy’s passion is to help people shine by helping them discover their potential, unleash their power and achieve exceptional goals. One aspect of the coaching process is to look at an individual’s self talk. We have approximately sixty thousand thoughts per day going through our head, most of them we are not even aware of, and not all of them are positive ones.

A lot of the negative thoughts are repetitive, like a broken record going around in your head- you know that catchy tune that you can’t get out of your head, it’s a bit like that, but unlike the catchy cheesy tune, these thoughts can be destructive and self perpetuating, holding you back from realising your true potential.

WHAT would happen if we put the record on to play some positivity? Then the opposite would happen, the thoughts would be constructive and self perpetuating, so for example instead of saying that “I am no good with saving money” you could try “I am going watch my spending this week and see where I can save money”, as you can see it is not a giant leap but it changes the language which in turn changes the internal record, which in turn creates all sorts of possibilities.

Anna has a couple of tips that can help you change the tone of your internal record:

  • 1. Become aware of your language, can you put it in the positive or negative category? If negative, think about how you can change the tone to a positive one.
  • 2. Watch for the words “always” and “never” in your vocabulary. These words have a way of bringing our mood down, try to take them out of the sentence and see what it sounds like.
  • 3. Listen to the people around you, what is their self talk like, can you hear it? Become aware of the positivity or negativity in your space.
  • 4. Start each morning with a positive statement; I know a manager who used to look at the mirror in the morning and say “You are amazing” which helped him achieve amazing goals each day. You can say anything you want as long as it is positive, “It is going to be a good day”, “I am Grateful for…..”
  • 5. Finish each evening with a quick review of the day and remind yourself of the good bits, there are always good bits in the day.

One final word of advice is to check in with your children, listen to their self-talk, is it positive or negative? It is never too late to plant the seed of positivity in their thoughts.
Anna Healy is a Life and Business Coach based in West Cork. She is available for consultations by appointment. Phone Anna on 087-2427848
www.annahealy.ie