Stress Management - How To Use Self Talk To Change Your Habits

What you say to yourself can trigger a stress reaction. Most of us have a habit or two we wouldn't mind changing. You've learn to take care of yourself from what you've been told, read and observed. You've developed patterns of eating, sleeping and how you relate to others. Along the way, you also acquired habits of thinking and feeling and the way you express yourself both verbally and non-verbally.

Habits are helpful because they conserve your energy. When you develop a habitual behavior you essentially go on auto-pilot. When you develop good habits, your life will run smoothly and easily with little stress or friction. When you develop bad habits, life gets rough.

Habits by their nature are resistant to change. The bad ones are difficult to change because it requires energy to change them and there's a payoff in saving energy. The good ones are hard to start because it requires energy to get them going and there isn't a payoff, at least not in the beginning.

The bad habits get in your way, hold you back, or in some cases, stop you completely. They are the well travel path which even though they lead you in the wrong direction, is the most easily follow.

All habits are the result of our previous conditioning, they're practiced until they become what seems like a natural way to behave. They are not natural at all, we weren't born with any of them. Negative habits are programs which we seem to get stuck with. Any of them can be replaced with a new program.

Self talk helps you work on specific problems. It directs your subconscious mind to stop doing something one way and start doing it another. Self talk replaces a behavior pattern that works against you with behaviors patterns which helps you solve problems or change specific actions. Here are a few common habits which all of us are familiar:

- Putting things off or procrastinating

- Making excuses

- Being a complainer

- Forgetting names

- Losing things

- Overindulging - eating or drinking

- Blaming others

- Saying "yes" when you want to say "no"

- Being a gossip

You can change these bad habits with positive self talk. All positive self talk is written, listened to, thought or read in the present tense. It's described as if the desired change has already taken place. By doing this you are giving your subconscious mind a completed picture of what you want to accomplish. In other words "this is the me I want to create." When you want to give the subconscious mind a new direction you wouldn't say "I going to lose weight" because if you use "I will, I'm going to, I need to, I should, I'd like to" your subconscious mind won't do anything about it.

State your goal or what you want to achieve in the present tense. Your subconscious mind will attempt to follow your exact wording.

- I don't smoke

- I have a good memory. I easily remember names

- I am good listener

- I only eat what I should

- I never spend more then I earn

- I set goals and I follow them

If you were to choose only one phrase you will have limited results because you haven't painted an entirely new picture for your subconscious mind. Start with one phrase and extend it, add to it, cover every part of the problem.

So be specific and thorough and you will change your habits and change your life.

Learn more about how you can manage your stress by changing your habits.