What’s Your Background Self-Talk?

Written by Terri Crosby

Have you ever (really, really) noticed what’s going on behind the curtain of your outward presentation of yourself?

Do you ever notice what you say to yourself in those private moments when no one is listening? Do you pay attention to your inner mantras?  Your unspoken expectations?

Have you ever caught yourself arguing with someone in your head, trying to reason with them and figure out how to get them to agree with you?

You probably have, because it is a common human experience. 

I don’t know about you, but I’ve done a lot of waking up this past year.  I’ve done a lot of changing of my outer dialogue, meaning the words that are easiest to notice. I’ve done well with that.

I’ve also taught this to many others — consulting clients and singing students.

Why bother to learn this?

The short story is that it makes a difference in how life unfolds.  Life gets better, it’s more fun, it’s more satisfying.

Now, I’m interested in kicking it up a notch.  I’m really aware of my desire to wake up in the middle of my not-so-hot inner dialogue and shifting it.

It’s time.

Just the other day I was standing at the sink in my kitchen, and noticed the “inner noise.”  It made me laugh, actually!  It was pretty bad!  I thought, “Wow!  There’s an unhappy party going on in there!”

Sometimes there are no words that I can hear, just body tension.  Hmmmm.  So I say to myself, “Hello tension!  Hello tight muscles.  Hello worry without words.  I bet I can ease up right now…”

And I consciously let go of the background tension.  I wake up.

I’ve done it over and over this past week.

Sometimes the inner dialogue is very positive and it’s like planning my future with bells on my toes.  It’s happy.  It’s pretty wonderful to notice.  That makes me smile, for a different reason!  I enjoy those moments.

My daughter MacKenzie and I have become partners in this wake up thing.  She and I talk about it, notice that we’re doing better about it, and that’s about it.  That’s all it takes.  We don’t report to each other what our mind was saying, we just notice when we NOTICE it, and we give ourselves a high five for any improvement.

Yikes!

It can be a little shocking to notice what goes on in the dark corners of our minds.  Sometimes it’s a low rumble of thoughts and sometimes it’s a scenario.  MacKenzie told me she was wiping a table at the restaurant where she works, and she noticed that she had created this whole future that she didn’t even want to live.

It’s weird, isn’t it, that we would do such a thing?  In any case, just interrupting it by waking up in the middle of the nonsense is the very finest and most effective thing we can do!

Awareness creates choice.  Personally, I’d rather have the inner landscape of my mind be like a lush garden, with an array of beautiful things growing!

Go ahead, try it this week.  Let me know how it goes!  I’d love to hear about your favorite WAKE UP moment.

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Terri Crosby offers change-of-heart, change-of-mind perspectives to create GREAT relationships — not just get-by, okay, sort of good, passing grade relationships.  Life’s too short for just getting by!  She is committed to providing perspectives that put the power to change your relationships in your capable hands.  You can’t change other people, but you can change your perspective.

Written by Terri Crosby, In Care of Relationships.  714-240-4889.