How You Talk To Yourself Might Be Sabotaging Your Success

Have you ever noticed how you talk to yourself? If not, how you talk to yourself might be sabotaging your success.

You talk to yourself all the time.  There’s a little voice inside your head you can’t get away from. You know the one; it’s a real chatterbox.

Your inner critic has been allowed to run rampant inside your head forever. How you talk to yourself, affects your results because there are two wolves doing battle inside your head.

The Wolves Within

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.”

Moral of the story; how you think might be sabotaging your success.

What’s really going on?

What’s really going on in your head is not you thinking aloud, it could be due to someone else from your past speaking on your behalf. Let’s see if any of these statements sounds familiar.

“I’m never going to get into university. I’m not smart enough.”

“I’m useless at math.”

“No point me entering the competition. I never win anything.”

“I’m such a clumsy person.”

Sound familiar?

If you have been programmed to believe you aren’t smart enough, you’re clumsy or useless at math, guess what, your subconscious mind believes it! It accepts everything you say according to your beliefs. The problem with talking to yourself like this is that the subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between these two statements; “I’m terrible at public speaking” or “I’m a fantastic speaker.”  Your subconscious mind accepts what you tell it as the truth.

Sometimes, you might joke to yourself and say, “stupid me.” The problem is your subconscious mind has no sense of humor. It can’t distinguish if you were joking, it only hears the words “stupid me.”

Imagine you are watching a horror movie. As the scenes play out on the screen you become frightened. Your stress hormones pump through your body and you are on the edge of your seat to the end. It’s as if you are living the horror for real. But it’s only a movie. You know it’s only a movie. You know they are only actors, but you are still scared. Your body reacts as if it were real. It’s the same with your subconscious mind. It reacts to how you talk to yourself as if it were real.

The Inner Critic

You have an inner critic that constantly puts you down.  They tell you things like:

 “Who do I think I am, I’ll never get that promotion, I’m just not good enough. I always screw up the interview. Every time I get close to a promotion, I mess up big time!” 

Your inner critic is not really you talking, it’s quite often a parent, grandparents, coach or even an old boss.  They are simply projecting their own past failures onto you and you believed them.

Growing up you were constantly fed negative failure statements like… “You are such a screw up – can’t you do anything right.” or… “You’ll never amount to anything if you keep this up.” or “By the time you are sixteen you’ll probably drop out of school and turn to drugs.”  

If this is what you were fed during your formative years you come to believe it’s true. This is why your thoughts are sabotaging your success.

The Inner Liar

Perhaps you have tried to change the way you think with little success. You got a promotion, but believe you’re not worthy. You feel like a fraud because there were better candidates than you. It must have been a fluke. 

If you think like this – chances are you are afraid someone will find out you aren’t really up for the job. You might try to compensate by becoming an overachiever. Alternatively, you might be hard on others you work with making them look bad (so you can look good) just in case you get found out you’re not worthy. 

Chances are you feel this way because of a previous boss or colleague. Perhaps it’s the voice of a respected authority figure or the result of a failed business venture.

A limiting belief is what’s sabotaging your success.

Limiting Beliefs

Most people have limiting beliefs about themselves that stop them from achieving their goals. However, most people don’t know they have limiting beliefs. They go about their lives doing the same things over and over and wonder why they don’t get different results.

Limiting beliefs are those thoughts and actions that constrain you in some way and in doing so impoverishes your life. Simply believing in them, inhibits you from doing, saying, or believing things beyond that belief.

Limiting beliefs can relate to specific areas of your life including family, friends, money, career, health, and fitness or they can be global about rights, abilities, and permissions.

Your limiting beliefs are feeding your fears. Fear is often what is holding you back. Fear is learned and can’t exist in your mind without your permission.

Put fear in its rightful place. Next time you catch your inner critic or inner liar talking, throw a positive affirmation right back at them. For example, instead of saying, “I’m no good at job interviews, I always mess them up.” Tell your subconscious mind “I’m fantastic at job interviews, I nail them every time! 

On a Final Note

If you don’t want your thoughts to sabotage your success, use the power of positive affirmations to change your results. This gives you the momentum you need to fast track your success.