Why Your Thoughts Might be Sabotaging Your Success

Success in life is determined by how you talk to yourself. Tell yourself you will fail and you most certainly will. Tell yourself you will succeed and you most certainly will. How you talk to yourself might be sabotaging your success. A life coach will help you overcome negative self-talk and understand how this is the key to success.

Consider the wise words of an old Cherokee.

The Wolves Inside Us

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all.
One wolf is evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other wolf is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed!”

Which Wolf Will you Feed?

If you pay attention to what’s going on in your mind, you will notice there’s a little voice that’s constantly talking to you all the time. It’s called your “self-talk” which is a result of your self-belief system. It’s a real chatterbox, and unlike a radio station, sometimes it’s truly hard to turn off. This self-talk (or inner dialogue) is a constant stream of positive or negative affirmations about the way you think. These inner thoughts either build or destroy your self-confidence and self-esteem depending on the thoughts you constantly feed your mind. 

We all have a “wolf voice” inside us.  Your negative self-talk is the evil wolf resulting in negative outcomes and your positive self-talk is the good wolf resulting in positive outcomes. The thoughts you feed your mind with, are the thoughts that will win the day.

If you are constantly feeding your mind with negative thoughts, consider the impact this has on you personally, your life, your career, and your business.

The problem is, when you consistently feed your mind with negative thoughts, your subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between fact and fiction. It accepts everything you tell it as being true. Your inner voice can make or break the achievement of personal and business goals.

It’s a Self-fulfilling Prophecy

The problem with allowing your negative thoughts to consume your thinking is that they become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You repeat things in your mind concerning the situations and events in your life and business, often without even being aware of it. Words and thoughts like…..

• I’m no good at selling ……
• I can’t lead others, they don’t listen to me ……
• I’m a terrible manager …..
• I never make money …… it’s too hard ……
• What’s the use of trying to grow my business, I will only fail ……
• No-one’s going to pay that much for my products or services ……
• I hate prospecting …… no one ever takes my calls ……
• My staff are useless ….. they are always making mistakes ……
• No one will date me – I don’t even like myself…..
• I’m a failure, everything I try to do turns out badly….

Yet successful people in and winners think positive thoughts like….

• I can do it……, I will nail that presentation ……
• I am a winner…… people love doing business with me ……
• I always know the right thing to say and do ……
• I am successful at everything I do ……
• I always attract and hire the best people ……
• My customers love to work with me ……
• It’s easy to find new customers ……
• I’m a fantastic boss ….. my staff respect and admire me …..
• It’s easy to make friends and find lasting relationships….
• I am full of confidence and everything I touch turns to gold….
• I’m a highly successful person….

Your self-talk works both ways. It’s impossible to have a positive and a negative thought at the same time. If you are going to repeat words and thoughts in your mind concerning the situations and events in your life and business, why not choose positive words and thoughts that will help you succeed and achieve your personal and professional goals.

How to feed the “good wolf?” 

You feed the good wolf in exactly the same way you feed the “evil wolf” – by constantly repeating or affirming everything in the positive. Consider what outcomes you want, and how you think about yourself, make sure you talk to yourself with positive self-affirming thoughts. If you are experiencing difficulties with negative self-talk, think about hiring a life coach to help you over this barrier to success.

What Causes Negative Self-Talk?

Self-Belief

The greatest obstacle towards achieving success in business is the inability to back yourself and believe success is possible. Instead of focusing on your strengths (positive thoughts), you tend to focus on your weaknesses and limitations (negative thoughts).

Behavioral researchers have found that almost 75% of everything we think about is in negative thoughts not positive. According to Dr. Shad Helmsetter, the reason we concentrate on the negative rather than the positive has to do with the negative programming we received in our formative years.

“During the first 18 years of our lives, if we grew up in fairly average reasonably positive homes, we were told ‘no’ on what we could not do more than 148,000 times.  If you were a little more fortunate, you may have been told ‘no’ only 100,000 times, or 50,000 times. However, for many, it was considerably more negative programming which determines how you think.”

If this is the case then it is no wonder we form a low opinion of ourselves and end up with low self-esteem.

Self-esteem

Self-esteem can be defined as your internal belief system and how you respond to and experience life externally. In other words, self-esteem is the way you think and feel about yourself and others. Your self-esteem is usually measured by the way you act and the way you act is largely a result of how you feel.

Each of us is born with the capacity to experience positive feelings and form a positive self-image of ourselves. However, it is also possible to learn not to like yourself and form a negative self-image leading to poor self-esteem. Either way, the feelings you have about yourself are largely a result of your life experiences and the influences in your life during your formative years. This often determines how you interact with others.

Low self-esteem is generally caused by negative emotional responses primarily from the experiences you had in your childhood. If you were constantly criticized by your parents, other adults, and or your peers, it’s likely you formed a low opinion of yourself and as a result, formed a low opinion of others. If you are a leader, manager, or even a parent, chances are this is how you respond to others by repeating what you learned in your formative years. Imagine the impact this has in the workplace and your personal relationships and a key reason why people hire a life coach or business coach to help them succeed.

Your self-esteem can change, sometimes daily depending on what you are experiencing or how you are feeling at the time. You may feel confident in one environment and an hour later move into a different environment and your feelings of self will change. This inconsistency in behavior affects the people around you.

Self-esteem is both conscious and unconscious.  It is an ongoing self-evaluation of yourself leading to a belief about what you can and cannot do. It also determines how you interact and responds to others. Leaders and managers with low self-esteem tend to criticize condemn and complain more than leaders with good self-esteem. 

What is the impact of negative thinking?

If you have low self-esteem and you criticize condemn and complain all the time, this will most likely affect the way you interact with your employees if you are in a management role. The good ones leave and the not so good ones stay. Chances are, if you continually criticize, condemn, and complain, employees will go through the motions, won’t try hard, or simply give up. By not trying and giving up, they will learn to fail more often than they learn to succeed. This reduces their levels of self-confidence and self-esteem. This is a continuous feedback loop that reinforces the belief they have in themselves that they too are a failure.

The same thing happens in personal relationships leading to break-ups and divorce. 

Developing high self-esteem, on the other hand, means that you have a positive sense of your inherent worth as a person.  If you have high self-esteem, you are more likely to persist and overcome any challenges you might face. If you do persist, you will learn to succeed more often than fail, the result being, you gain more self-confidence and increase your self-worth.

High self-esteem manifests itself as having a great deal of self-confidence and developing a high sense of self-worth and self-respect which translates into more effective leadership and management and successful interpersonal relationships. 

Developing high self-esteem is the key to success and can be learned, but it does not happen overnight. The key to improving your self-esteem is how willing you are at taking responsibility for your feelings, thoughts, desires, abilities, and interests and to focus on and accept your overall strengths.

To change how you think, check out Amy Cuddy’s amazing Ted Talk about striking up a power pose. Use this technique to improve your confidence before you meet with a new prospect, service a customer, make a presentation, meet with your bank manager, or even look to inspire your people.

http://bit.ly/AmyTedTalk

Catch Yourself and Others Doing the Right Thing

As you can see, it’s a default mechanism for a leader, manager, and co-workers to criticize condemn, and complain. If employees feel like they never do anything right, then, of course, they will continue to do everything wrong. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why not catch your staff, co-workers, friends, and family doing the right thing instead. That too is a self-fulfilling prophecy and in turn, they will do the right thing for you.

If you have a tendency to think negatively as a leader or manager, not only does this reflect on your employees, it also reflects on how they respond in the workplace, it’s infectious. If you are always catching others doing the wrong thing, they lose self-confidence which lowers their self-esteem to the point where they become negative as well. If others around you are unhappy and unfilled in their role, this will reflect on the service they provide your customers. As Richard Branson says, if you look after your employees they will look after your customers.

Your attitude determines your success as a leader. Successful businesses don’t happen by chance, they happen with the right attitude and the right self-talk. Like any new skills, practice catching yourself doing the right things through the power of positive thinking. When you change the way you talk to yourself, you change your results.

Watch your self talk. Make sure it’s positive because if it is, you will attract successful relationships in your business.

On a Final Note

Learn how the Strategez for Success Coaching Model helps you master a life of Success. With the help of a life coach, or business coach, you will easily fast track your way to a successful life with no barriers.

Contact us now or set up your FREE Discovery Session here to find out if Life Coaching or Business Coaching is right for you and a right fit for us. Learn how to Thrive not just survive.

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