Negative Self Talk

“All the misery we have is of our own choosing; such is our nature.” - Swami Vivekanand

I recently stumbled upon this quote, while at first, I was infuriated on how can we choose our own misery. My first thought was that am I choosing to get hurt by someone, or being cheated by someone. But it also made me question my miseries too. Is it really possible that we choose our own miseries ?

Although I still can't formulate a concrete answer, thinking about this made me realize a few things which I would like to share with you all.  Let's start with a question, how often do we find ourselves talking to ourselves negatively, or criticizing ourselves and how often do we talk to ourselves in a positive, affirming tone and praise ourselves ??

While thinking about this myself, I realised,  it's almost never that I talk to myself in a positive, affirming tone or praise myself. Life is inherently filled with obstacles that are outside of our control, but what adds to these obstacles in our life are our negative thoughts. Still don't know whether we choose our miseries, but our negative thoughts definitely add to them and make things more difficult for us. They do untold damage, visible or invisible. 

In my train of thoughts, the next thing that came up was, these thoughts come automatically, it becomes hard to control them. That's the case with everyone. In psychology we have a concept called automatic negative thoughts- It states that after any event our brain automatically produces negative thoughts which may be in the form of negative self talk. These thoughts emerge immediately without us being aware of forming such thoughts. This means that these negative beliefs are so deep rooted in our cognition that we generate them without using any cognitive energy. Automated negative thoughts may not use our cognitive energy but constantly having these thoughts do affect the mental health of an individual.

We have established that somehow, even if we don't choose our misery, we may unconsciously choose to add more pain to that misery by indulging in negative self-talk and it's not the healthiest thing to do for our overall health.  A conscious effort to not indulge in negative self-talk can reduce a major chunk of misery. Here are some technique that can aid in our conscious effort -

  1. Try neutral thinking : Take your thoughts from being extremely negative to a more realistic and balanced version of what you’re thinking. For example in a situation where you failed a test, negative thoughts can be “I failed this test. I can’t do anything right. I’m going to fail at everything. There’s no use in even trying.” , instead of this you can neutralize your thoughts with a more realistic approach , like “It’s OK for me to be disappointed about failing the test. But I’m good at other things, and I can come up with some ways to prevent this in the future.”

  2. Acknowledge & Consider The Cause : Take some time to acknowledge your thoughts and consider where these thoughts come from and confront them. It will help you address them and work toward silencing them.

  3. Surround Yourself With Positivity : Surround yourself with things that give you energy and motivate you, in simple words when you are feeling down, raise yourself up. Know what helps improve your mood and your mindset so you can change it. 

That’s this weeks  2 cents of wisdom, hope you find it useful, and will make efforts to not indulge in negative self-talk

See you next time ! 

- Co founder (Wakeful mind)


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