Stop Hitting Yourself...

The voices in my head have been so negative lately! It's starting to drive me crazy.

In the Discovery program that I teach, we explain to our students that the average person has tens of thousands of thoughts a day and about 75% of them are negative. The first time I heard these numbers, I was astounded. "I'm an incredibly positive person," I thought. "I don't have that many negative thoughts." "Well, Maura, you're being stupid if you're denying the fact that you still have negative thoughts!" Oh! There they are! Maybe it's just part of our nature to think negatively.

Fortunately, we don't have to settle with negative Self-Talk. Since I am trying to indoctrinate my students with that idea, then I better believe it and practice it myself. I teach my students that there are FIRE WORDS and WATER WORDS. Fire words are negative mantras that we tell ourselves that are detrimental to our positive mental attitudes. Water words are words that encourage us and help keep our thinking on the up and up.

It's time for me to start using WATER WORDS. My life is in a great place right now. I have an awesome job, awesome man, awesome health, awesome new educational endeavors, awesome friends, and an awesome family. However, for some reason I am not focusing on what is good, but on the things I cannot do. This focus is becoming debilitating to my mental health! The words going through my head aren't ones of self-encouragement, but instead of limitations and drawbacks.

So now the positive self-talk is being tested. It's really easy to talk nice to myself when I'm visibly moving forward and doing well, but that's not when it's the most important for me to be positive. In times when life is about changing and maintaining is when I need to cheer myself on the most. I'm hoping that I can turn the "I can't do this; I suck" thoughts into "I can do anything I set my mind to; I have the necessary skills to overcome this hurdle" thoughts!

Wish me luck!

lovemaura