Your Self Talk Can Make or Break Your Fitness Success

When you think about exercise, what is the first thing that pops in your head? If you think “healthy dinner” what follows in your mind? When you think about losing 10lbs what do you hear yourself thinking?

All this chatter is your inner dialogue or self talk. If you’re really listening, it can be illuminating into how you feel about your fitness goals, yourself or anything really.

Is your self talk helping or hindering you?

Despite our best efforts to “stay positive” your self talk can sabotage you in ways you don’t even realize. If you truly don’t like doing something, your self talk will let you know. If you don’t feel confident, your self talk will let you know. If you don’t believe you deserve something, your self talk will make it clear. What your self talk tells you will have an effect on how you perform, react, respond or feel about any given situation. Positive self talk will obviously bring optimism and confidence, negative self talk will be an obstacle or otherwise discourage you.

Never fear! You can reprogram your self talk!

You are not doomed to have that Negative Nelly in your head forever. It will take some doing but you can shift your thoughts to ones that are more productive, supportive and positive. You have to do a few things to make this possible though.

Listen: You have to listen to what the self talk is saying.  Often we dismiss this inner chatter and wonder why we don’t feel so great. Listening is the first step to reprogramming your self talk.

Interpret: Ask “WHY?” Why do I feel this way? Why am I thinking this? Am I afraid? Have I failed before? Getting to the bottom of why you use this self talk and then getting to the root of why you allow this to be a feeling you have is the key. Many won’t take this step because it takes some introspection. You can do it.

Re-frame: Armed with your “why” you can now begin to re-frame your thinking to be supportive. You can take the previous self talk that was unsupportive and flip it to one that drive you to your success.  It might help to make two columns on a sheet of paper, one side is the “Old Self Talk” and the other side is the “New Self Talk” that is supportive and empowering.

Commitment Words: Use strong  NOW words like “am” instead of “will.” Words that give you wiggle room are not helpful. “I hope, I will, I want to, I would like” are all weak phrases that give you an OUT. These types of phrases set us up to accept failure since we never committed in the first place. Use terms like “I am, I can, I choose, I always, I know.” These words place us in an empowered mindset.

Do or do not. There is no try -Yoda

Use these phrases as a Mantra or Affirmation until they become more automatic. You might have to “fake it til you make it” at first. As you achieve baby steps to success you’ll begin to FEEL them as true. Making the switch from negative or unsupportive self talk to one that is strong, supportive and empowering can make all the difference in your fitness (or anything) success.

Give it a shot! I know you can do it!

Recommended Reading

I highly recommend the book “What to Say When You Talk to Yourself” by Shad Helmstetter, PhD. It’s a tremendous book that goes into great detail, gives tons of examples and can be illuminating as to how many “positive” thoughts we have are actually not that great. It’s a fast read that can get you putting the ideas into action immediately!