It does not matter if you are getting out of crisis or just changing the trajectory of your life, you need to change your mindset. If you approach change as a task, you will never truly have lasting impact. You might form more healthy behaviors, but underneath it you need to change the messages you tell yourself. Positive mindset coaching only works if you are able to replace the negative self-talk and sabotaging behavior.
The Hidden Power of Self-Talk
Think of a situation outside of yourself for a moment. It’s easier to diagnose when it’s not personal.
For example, I have a friend that called me in need of support the other day. She needed reassurance that she was not being selfish in a situation and that she was a ‘good person’. Let’s break this down for a second. Over the years that I have known her, I have heard the messaging that she has been told by her family. She is a burden, she is not smart, she is not worthy of love and kindness. All those statements sound dramatic, but when you put those up as a mirror to what she was asking me it makes sense.
In this situation, the negative tapes of insecurity are filled with these negative statements causing self-sabotage.
Breaking Down the Patterns
First reframe: Having emotions as a response to a situation are valid. When people tell you otherwise, they don’t want to give you this permission because it would decenter their needs in your life. In addition, a double down of this is that having those emotions is selfish.
Second reframe: You are a good person. This limiting belief that you are only good or bad limits the complexity that is life. Life is messy and analyzing behavior takes nuance. Needing to be perceived as a ‘good person’ can be a trap if it means that you conform for the approval of another person. Conformity by definition kills the idea that you have the right to self-preservation as the ecosystem you live in is more important than the individual. Again, decentering what is best for you, what supports you to support someone else’s belief structure.
Third reframe: In my friend’s situation, the person she had a conflict with was not speaking to her. My friend automatically went to a situation where she mis-stepped but apologized. She leapt to the assumption that her behavior was the problem. You cannot control how other people behave. When you immediately feel like things are your fault, you are accepting the fact that you are not worthy and always at fault. This need for other people’s approval is damaging to our identity and self-worth. This is absolutely a trauma response to make everything okay at the expense of yourself. It teaches you to not advocate for yourself because you center others’ needs over your own.
From Situational to Foundational Change
My friend happens to be very intelligent and self-aware. In fact, she talked through some of the issue with more positive framing of the situation, taking ownership for her feelings and stating the facts as she knows them. I acknowledged that she is responsibly parsing out the situation as neutrally as possible but urged her to look deeper at the source of the negative self-talk and sabotaging behavior.
This is where your mindset is your savior. Retraining your mindset has to start at the beginning of where these negative behaviors start (childhood). This challenge takes that positive reframing and moves it from situational to foundational. Fundamentally, you need to believe all the way down to the core of your being that you are worthy, have value, are smart and capable and all the other attributes that describe who you uniquely are. You will never be able to control other people’s behavior, but you can control what you think about yourself. If the information coming at you is out of alignment with who you are, you listen to your inner voice. It is when we listen to other people tell us who we are and how to behave that we run into trouble.
Breaking the Cycle
The negative self-talk and sabotaging behavior that was learned early in life hangs in the background and shows up like an old friend in a crisis. Until we banish its existence, it will keep showing up. That is why when you hear people say, it’s a process, they mean it. It may take years to undo these beliefs.
Be kind to yourself. Start slow. Call out the statements that limit you. Take some time for reflection to see where this began. Understand what it meant to you then. You were a child needing to conform to survive. You had no understanding of life or tools to approach things differently. But now that is not the case. You have more tools, more options and more support. Ask for what you need and focus on moving forward. Mourn the child who thought that they had to somehow shrink who they were to get along and survive. Life is best lived when you live it as your authentic self. Be the best you, you can be!
