Starting Small To Change Your Inner Dialogue

This article is a follow-on from an earlier article titled "Who are you talking to?"

So did you participate in those inner conversations? How aware have you become of them?

As I mentioned last time, raising your awareness of the tone of your internal conversations, and how you feel at the end of these conversations, is the first step to making these conversations work for you.

If you did try to "listen" in, were you included in the conversation? Those of you who are thinking, 'but I don't talk to myself' - what you are doing right now is having a conversation with yourself. Not a conversation in the strict sense of the word as there is only one person involved, but usually there is some degree of to and fro to the inner dialogue.So what has this got to do with you?

So what if I have an inner dialogue?

I am glad you asked.

Your inner dialogue is the voice you give to your thoughts, feelings and emotions. Just as surely as if this voice came from someone else, its impact should not be underestimated. This inner voice is part of your internal compass. It can either be your guide along the road of your life's purpose, or it can lead you down side roads that take you away from the road of your life's purpose.

So how do you set your compass to help you navigate along your road? The first step is awareness. Once you become aware of your inner dialogue, the next step is to align your inner dialogue so that it helps you remain focussed, to help you stay positive and to help you evaluate your experiences from a more realistic perspective.You are aiming to use your inner voice as a support tool, a tool you use to help build your self image and strength. Your inner voice them becomes like your own partner in your development. It becomes part of you support network as you move through life.To get to this point, you need to start small.

Start with recognising the small things you do well during the day. I wear contact lenses, which I sometimes had great trouble getting in some mornings. I used to get really mad with myself for not being able to do such a simple task quickly. My frustration would spill into my day. I started to turn this around by celebrating the time I put my contacts in quickly.

Ok, so I didn't have a party, but that is not the point. The point is that I started to talk to myself in a positive light. I started to notice and celebrate my successes. A smile to myself in the mirror, a quiet "yes", just small things.

Small things start building a foundation for the bigger things.Pretty soon I found my anger and frustration became less and less, my success rate went way up, and the flow on effect into the rest of my day meant I was in a more positive frame of mind. Right then, that sounds easy doesn't it? Just start small. But how can you be thinking about those small things when you have much bigger concerns?

Granted, celebrating your small successes can be very difficult at first, and it requires you to be aware of your day moment to moment. You need to shift your thinking, in sometimes quite radical ways to be able to consistently celebrate your successes - however small.

So then I guess the question becomes this; if you want to make a change in your life, is the change more likely to come about with a radical about face, or a step-wise fashion, with small incremental changes that take you towards you goal?

If you are the type of person who can make and maintain radical about face changes, I take my hat of to you. If you are not that type of person, and I am certainly not, then you will need to take on the change bit by bit, making steady progress.

You will need to give yourself permission to improve one small area of you life, or improve the way you do one small task. When you do that task or are working in that small area of your life, give it your focus. Zoom in one the detail, and look for the parts that you do well and celebrate those parts.

Also, identify those parts that you do not do so well, and give yourself permission to improve them. Allow yourself to try again from the perspective of improvement.

While you are in this improvement mode, please try to keep in mind that there is no scoring mechanism, there is no maximum number of attempts before you are a 'failure'. While those types of limitations have their place in this world, they are not part of this journey. You need to be kind to yourself if you are going to make this type of change stick.

Think about this - would you place this type of limitation on someone learning to drive, to walk, to read or to speak? If not, why would you place a limit on the number of tries you get to be able to smile at yourself, to put a contact lens in quickly, or to allow yourself to celebrate your success?

That is a lot to think about.

So then, the keys so far are;
1. Become aware of your inner dialogue
2. Turn your inner dialogue into part of your support network by celebrating small successes