A sports psychologist explains how to handle negative self-talk in three steps: notice it without fighting it, respond with compassion, then reframe it. The brain naturally fixates on problems, but this technique works across relationships, work, and any tough situation.
Have there been any, like, unexpected opportunities that might have helped you in other areas of your life? From studying performance and athletes and.
Certainly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would say so. I mean, I run my own business. You do too. So you know that sometimes there's that negative self talk that comes up. Say if you're not seeing results, you're putting in the effort, putting in the work, but you're not yet seeing the results. Similar thing can happen with athletes too. So I think I've learned how to control my negative self talk. I don't try to, you know, stifle it or smother it. I realize it's a natural human reaction that we all have negative self talk. And so what I do is I, you know, I, I catch it as it comes up, have compassion for it actually, and go, okay, I get it. I'm concerned, like I'm interested, I'm passionate, and I kind of give it a reframe and then I instill the positive thinking as an antidote to that. So everything I've studied in, in sports and in psychology, I apply it. You can apply it to really anything in your life, to relationships too. Right. So if you're mad at your significant other, you can watch the self talk going on there, right? Yeah. And so I think it's a lot of just self awareness, of just being aware of how the human brain is wired. It's wired by default to look for problems and look for negativity. So that if you're able to observe that phenomenon and understand the purpose for it, it's more of a survival mechanism and move beyond that. A lot of all that self awareness comes in handy in times of challenge in your life and really any aspect of your life.
