Very early in my parenting journey, I got a wake-up call from my kids about how I was speaking to them. It turns out that my intense tone was already having a negative effect on our relationship. I’ll link the longer story in the show notes, but in a nutshell—I started to notice that our kids were habitually choosing my husband, who was working very long hours at that time, over me, their stay-at-home primary caregiver—when all they needed was love and comfort.
Ya see Team, while I was speaking to my kids with a harsh tone, it was nothing compared to the way I was talking to myself—honestly, my inner voice could’ve used a good HR department. But I was desperate to do something to soften my delivery because having a close, respectful relationship with my adult children was really important to me, and I felt strongly that this kind of relationship was built over years and years.
Back then, my strategy was to immerse myself in opportunities to learn and understand the language of compassion. I joined a compassionate gym, we found a compassionate church, I met and spent time with new compassionate friends. Slowly, I learned a gentler approach to life.
While those lessons changed everything and healed my relationships with my kids, it recently came to my attention that I might still be hurting myself with my words. Without even realizing it, I still have a surprisingly generous supply of negative self-talk — from me, to me. Let’s see if anyone listening today can identify with any of the following phrases:
I pulled these examples from a book I’ve been reading called, What To Say When You Talk To Yourself, by Shad Helmstetter. It’s an easily digestible book, written in the mid 80’s, and it’s entirely devoted to the topic of self-talk and its influence to either empower us or keep us stuck.
In it, Dr. Helmstetter explains that our subconscious is like a computer—it will believe anything and everything that we program it to believe. And our subconscious cannot tell the difference between the truth and a lie. If I program my brain to believe that, ‘I have the worst luck, nothing goes right for me,’ that’s what my mental computer will accept. On the contrary, if I program it to believe that, ‘I have the best luck. Everything goes right for me,’ that’s what my brain-box will accept as truth.
In an interview on YouTube, Helmstetter explains that a thought starts as a pathway and, “….those pathways become roadways, and then the roadways become highways, and some of those highways become interstate highways, and those are the major programs that govern our lives…..We become the programs that we get most.” Basically, the more we repeat a thought, the deeper that groove becomes in our mind. He goes on to teach us that some of these paths are started as things we were told as children, and some are ideas that we picked up along the way, but regardless of how they were planted in our proverbial hard drives, the way to deconstruct those damaging neuro pathways is by offering positive self-talk to take the place of the negative messages.
Since my eyes have been opened to this concept, I’ve quickly experienced the power of this work, so naturally, I wanted to share it with our TeamConfessions family. Is anyone game? If you’re interested, you can read or listen to the book and we’ll kick off our Confessions Self-Talk Invitation next year on January 2. This will be a 30-day “do the best you can” invite to listen to engage in positive self-talk phrases for about 15 minutes a day.
Whether you’re game or not for joining us—the real goal is to become more aware of our inner monologues. So this week, maybe we can just start by becoming conscious of how we’re speaking to ourselves currently. What messages are our personal hard drives receiving over and over and over again? Are they positive? Are they full of belief and faith in ourselves and our journey? Or negative—filling our spirits with overwhelm, fear, and hopelessness?
If this topic interests you and you’re excited to read the book and give this method a try, I also want to share that I’ve been using Shad’s Self-Talk+ app on my phone, and I’m really enjoying it. He has programs for dozens of different topics, that include but aren’t limited to: positive living, self-esteem, health & fitness, recovery, quality of life, and a lot more. I’ve also recorded a short synopsis of the book if you know you won’t have a chance to read it.
So Team, you’ve got lots of resources and I’ll link all of them in this post.
Next week, do you guys know what holiday it is? YES! Fend For Yourself Day 2025. A day when we communally recover from whatever we need to recover from, and everyone in our families are encouraged to fend for themselves. Have a lovely Christmas week Team, and thanks so much for listening.
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Welcome to my blog turned podcast! Here you can listen or read about what’s on my mind as I try my best to recover from screaming at my kids and nagging the bejesus out my husband.
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