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Blog for Self Improvement and Personality Development

Self improvement advice, personal growth and self-help tips.

Mental Self Help – The Secret Of Positive Self Talk

Your self talk, the conversation that you carry on with yourself almost continually, is a vital component of your mental state. If your self talk is predominantly negative – “I can’t do…”, “I’m unhappy” – you will be unhappy, have low motivation and low self esteem.

If you self talk is mainly positive, the opposite will be true. You can use mental self help to change your self talk from positive to negative…

You talk to yourself and lot. It has been estimated that up to 1500 words per minute pass through your mind expressing an enormous number of thoughts that shape your view of the world, determine your mental state and just sometimes are part of your thinking process!

Much of your self talk is the result of thoughts coming from your subconscious mind and is a result of your past conditioning, your memories and other factors that affect your subconscious thought processes. It feels as if much of your self talk is out of your conscious control. Yet your self talk exerts a tremendous influence on your conscious mind and the results that you are able to achieve in life.

The good news is that psychological studies have shown that, with a little persistence, you can make your self talk more positive. When you do this you will benefit from a more positive mental attitude. If you talk to yourself about the way that you want your life to be, the chances are greatly increased that it will turn out that way.

Talk to Yourself to Improve Your Self Talk

There are a number of routes to more positive self talk. You can undergo extensive programs of self analysis to eliminate past traumas, you can use will power to stop yourself and so on. All these methods can take a long time and be quite difficult to apply to yourself.

One of the most effective ways to improve your self talk is to use positive affirmations. This is a remarkably simple way to change your self talk - you talk to yourself in a positive way and with a bit of persistence, your subconscious mind changes it’s habits and your self talk becomes more positive!

You may even be doing it already. When you’re faced doing something that you find a bit daunting, you may already be using simple affirmations such as “I can do it” to encourage yourself. This simple technique can be extended to anything that you want to achieve – greater happiness, greater success in life, kicking negative habits…

Affirmations have been proven to work by many successful people. However to get them to work, you have to do them correctly. Your affirmations need to be positive statements of what you want. Negative statements of what you don’t want will just add to your negative self talk and condition your mind to achieve what you don’t want. Affirmations also have to be charged with emotion and used regularly to be effective.

Negative self talk leads to negative mental attitudes and poor results in your life. One of the most powerful mental self help techniques for overcoming negative self talk is positive affirmations. If carried out regularly and correctly, positive affirmations can make your self talk more positive and improve your results in life.

By: Kevin John

Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Find out more about how to do positive affirmations correctly. Visit my website for more resources, articles, and support materials about success and personal growth here. Kevin John has spent many years helping businesses owners, aspiring business owners, and private individuals to achieve success.


Mental Self Help – 6 Steps To Making Better Decisions

Do you find making the right decisions very difficult? Do you feel inadequate because you don't make good decisions? Are you trapped in procrastination by your decision making ability? Take heart! Decision making can be quite easy provided you use a systematic approach to it. In fact you've already shown you're able to make decisions - you've decided to read this article...

We are all faced with thousands of decisions every day. Some decisions are quite easy like when to eat lunch, whether to take a coat in case it rains and so on. You probably make these decisions with very little difficulty or thought. Other decisions are much harder, often they have major implications for your finances and your life like: should I take that new job? Should I prioritise that special project the boss has given me? Which car should I buy?

Making bigger and more complex decisions about things that are going to have a significant effect on you is often very intimidating and you may be like many people who end up procrastinating rather than acting decisively. Procrastination in decision making is one of the main causes for poor results in life and can lead you to making a poor decision when you are faced with an urgent need to make a decision that you could have made in a more controlled and effective manner. You need to learn to make faster and better decisions.

Use a system to make decision

A systematic approach can help to ensure that you make your decisions in the best way possible in a reasonable period of time. It will enable you to collect all the information you need to make a decision and analyse it as thoroughly as possible before you have to commit. Here are the steps to take:

1. Before you start, get clear on what you want out of the decision. What is the best possible result going to be like? Will it line up with your overall goals and purpose? Write this down.

2. Start with a blank piece of paper and write down all the facts you know about this decision - write down everything in the order they occur to you. Now go back over your list and ask yourself are these all facts, or are some of them half truths or emotional judgements. If you find half truths or emotional judgements either correct them or cross them out.

3. Now you have a good knowledge of the circumstances of the decision, spend a few moments brainstorming options. You'll probably find that as you went through step 2 options that hadn't occurred to you suddenly popped out. Look over your list - do you need to get some more information to improve your list of options? By listing all the options you can conceive you can be assured that you are making the best decision possible.

4. Go through each option. Ask yourself three questions: Based on what I know, what are the benefits and consequences of this option? How do I feel about this option - does it excite me, does my heart tell me it feels right? How well does this option meet the objective I wrote down in step 1?

5. Rate the options. The top option is your decision. Now look at it again, if necessary take a short break, you've come a long way and what you're about to do is to commit yourself. Ask yourself: Does this make sense? Does it feel right to me? If your answer to these two questions is positive - congratulations you're done! If the answer is negative - do you need some more information to help you rate them differently? Did you miss anything in thinking it through the first time round?

You must remember that no decision is taken with absolutely perfect information, no decision is completely irreversible, balance any uncertainty you have against the need to make a decision.

6. COMMIT! Once you've reached your conclusion, you must commit wholeheartedly to implementing your decision. You can be reassured that you've done the absolute best you can.

The first time you try a systematic approach you may find it slow and difficult. Like every skill, you need to practice it to become proficient at it. As you get better, you will find decision making gets easier and faster. Persist and you will be able to overcome procrastination and time wasting.

By: Kevin John

Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Find out more about Mental self help . Download my latest e-book here Secrets of a Millionaire Mindset . Kevin John has spent many years helping businesses owners, aspiring business owners, and private individuals to achieve success.