The most common mistake a lot of people make is they start taking action on their goals before they realise how they are taking those actions.
Here’s an example: When you want to get healthier you may take a vow to eat healthy and exercise but after a couple of days you’re not able to keep up to that vow. Not because you’re a bad person, it’s because you’ve not taken
the time to assess how you’re trying to get healthy.
If you look at your body and criticise yourself for being too thin, or too fat or not having enough muscle or any other negative thing you say about your body, no matter what action you take you won’t be able to keep up with those
actions.
The reason behind this is how you talk to yourself determines how you feel and how you feel determines what actions you take or don’t take.
When you have a healthy self-talk, you feel good about yourself and when you feel good you’re able to work on your goals from a healthy place.
The worst thing you can do is criticise yourself while working on your goals.. If you say anything negative about yourself to yourself such as “I’m so stupid, I’m so pathetic, I’m a loser” such negative words make you feel terrible
about who you are.
I used to be highly critical of myself. I had this bad habit of berating myself constantly.. So I know first hand how it feels. It’s not a good feeling.
What I encourage you to do is to consciously start repairing the words you say to yourself. They are the most important words you’ll ever say.
The simplest way to improve your self-talk is to imagine speaking to the younger version of yourself. Would you be so hard on him/her? Would you use harsh words on them?
If that doesn’t work either think of someone you love deeply, would you say mean words to them? Chances are you won’t, then why say them to yourself?
If you still don’t believe that there’s a connection between negative self-talk and how you show up and work on yourself, do an objective experiment with yourself.
Next time you take any sort of action and it doesn't go as you planned, just observe what you say to yourself automatically.
If it’s anything negative, my humble suggestion is to start repairing your self-talk. The insight to Action challenge is going to help you do just that!