Have you paid attention to your inner dialogue lately?

Many of us go through our daily lives on automatic.  We have our daily tasks in front of us and we move forward through our day, sometimes without much thought.  In our automatic state, we often can move through the moments unaware of what we are thinking or saying to ourselves.  99% of what we think today, we will think tomorrow and we thought yesterday. These thoughts can be fleeting and often on the unconscious level so we don’t even notice the thoughts.  Yet, these thoughts are often thoughts we developed during our childhood through our life experiences. Through the constant replaying of the thoughts, they become hard-wired into our brain and we default to them easily and unconsciously. And they may not be the thoughts we want to live by.

The first 18 years of our life have great impact on our “future self”.  If we don’t pay attention and make conscious decisions, we replay these old tapes that we developed during those years.  And we replay them daily. The concern about this is that when we think these thoughts, we unconsciously believe them and we live them out as if they are the truth.  If you think, “I am not worthy,” you may play that out as a self-fulfilling prophecy.  And if your mind, body and soul takes this on as the truth merely because you “say the thought” to yourself on a daily basis, then why can’t it also take on the truth of positive affirmations and thoughts? 

Affirmations are statements you deliberately state consciously.  I often speak of it as “infiltrating your subconscious mind”.  Because if you give your subconscious good and worthwhile thoughts about yourself and you take those thoughts in, versus the negative thoughts, then you start fulfilling those thoughts.  So it seems like a “no brainer” to give yourself the positive thoughts.  But it does take a bit of conscious work.  You may want to spend a few days catching the thoughts you say to yourself.  Write  them down and see what the theme is about.  Then take those thoughts and change them to a positive affirmation.  Affirmations should be short, simple statements said in the present tense.  I am worthwhile.  I am deserving.  I am lovable.  I am well-liked. Pick the areas you want to improve on within yourself.  Then spend time daily saying these affirmations. Say them, write them, think them, and infiltrate your mind with the affirmations over and over again each day.  Soon your mind will default to these statements.  The least that you will get from this practice is that you start to like yourself better.  This is the natural outcome as we spend our day with a positive commentary going through our minds about ourselves versus the negative commentary.  So make a conscious decision about what you want to think today.