Harmful Self-Talk

 

The Harm in Negative Self-Talk

How we talk with ourselves will build us stronger or tear us down. It will either build our confidence or self-doubt. If we continuously doubt our skills, we are most likely hesitant to take risks or make ambitious goals. Negative self-talk will negatively impact your abilities because your mind will make it your truth. So, be careful how you talk to yourself and what you start believing. Sometimes, a slight push to a more positive direction is enough to set the course in a more pleasant direction; sometimes, we must work hard with our core beliefs to become whole and confident. 

When you doubt your skills and abilities, some tasks may seem overwhelming, and you try to put them aside for as long as possible. You do not want to fail or feel that disorderly confusion that often comes with a task that needs sorting out. Procrastination is a form of self-protection against the possibility of negative feelings and failures that might come with the project. Often, these fears are misplaced, and nothing terrible happens. However, procrastination can stand in your way of achieving your goals because the higher the aim and the further your ultimate goal is, the more you need to step outside your comfort zone and acquire new talents; the scarier the journey is, the easier it is to procrastinate. In a worst-case scenario, procrastination can lead to missed opportunities and decreased productivity.

Negative self-talk is highly harmful and, unfortunately, often learned early in life. If the feedback we get from our actions is generally negative in any area of life, we tend to start believing that feedback. That feedback sets the tone in our minds, and we start believing that something is wrong with us in that area. Repeated negative comments from an external source become our belief system's internal truth. Negative thinking often leads to a limited mindset and, as such, narrows down our opportunities. We need to be mindful of how we hear things because, eventually, that negatively twisted thinking pattern starts to narrate our minds, and we begin hearing negativity in places where negativity was not intended. To fight that, we need to build resilience and a growth mindset.