Yep, you’ve guessed it… in your very own head.
You have undoubtedly heard the term “self-talk” and most often when discussed it is referenced as negative self-talk.
The conversations you have with yourself inside of your own head, or worse yet out loud, that demeans your own personal value, self-worth, and belief in yourself that ultimately sabotage your own psyche.
Perhaps there is nothing, and I do mean nothing, worse than this for you.
The main reason is based on the fact that we become what we think about as you very quickly start to believe the negative and soon emulate with actions, attitudes, and behaviors.
I have talked here many times about visualization. The best examples are from sports. The baseball player that doesn’t see the strikeout, he sees the hit. He visualizes the bat connecting to the ball. The QB doesn’t see the interception, he sees the completion.
However, in life, far more important and significant than sports, it is much more impactful because you think about things like your looks, your smarts, your ability to handle pressure, how you are as a team member, and everything else.
Most everyone thinks of these relationships in backwards order. The way you see yourself dictates more the way others see you than the other way around. And the way you talk to yourself dictates what happens in your life more than what happens in life dictates how you talk to yourself.
This brings me back to our discussion about ‘not losing’ and not doing things that otherwise sabotage what you are trying to accomplish.
Personally
Professionally
With your patients
With your team
With yourself
This really begins and originates with your self-talk, your visualization, and what you focus on.
Here are some easy questions to help you overcome these tendencies…
In what ways can you better and more positively talk to yourself?
How can you, as a team, do a better job of seeing success and expecting positive outcomes instead of the opposite?
Moreover, what can we do to prevent mistakes, missteps, and negative things from happening that cause losses instead of facilitate victories?
As promised last week, I now want to flip back over to the “how not to lose” conversation and dig a little deeper in the points of self-doubt, shortcuts taken, and sabotage that interferes in order to add to that this very topic about self-talk and expectations. We are looking for the things that get in your way of success even though it is often unintentional or unintended. None the less, the results and outcomes are the same… diminished and not leading you to victory.
This is worth a full fledge and really ongoing conversation with each of you. There’s no way you can do it justice in a huddle. Still, once you become more self-aware of your thoughts, your verbiage, and your protocols that might be working against you, you can use that list to do a daily check-in during your morning huddle. This goes beyond just identifying opportunity and into figuring out how to WIN THE DAY.
Most of all, I want you to remove from your head anything that is a ‘losing mentality’ and ‘negative self-talk.’ Whether that’s about you or your patients or quite frankly anything. Just commit to dumping what’s often called ‘head trash.’
We’ll end there for today with a “too be continued.”
Let’s clean out the clutter and throw away the things in your head that shouldn’t be there; you deserve better.
Let the next thought in your mind be positive and go make the most of your day.
