As a precursor, please understand that I am not trying to build myself up in your eyes or brag, but am using a personal example of achievement to illustrate a point that I believe can help each of us.
For those that may not know me, I was fortunate enough to fulfill every guy's boyhood-backyard dream in college of playing football at the D-1 level. I was recruited to wrestle at the Air Force Academy but I knew in my heart that I would regret not giving football a shot. For arguably the first time in my life I approached something that I was likely to fail at, but I had to know if I could do it or not. I established myself as a "Rudy" type of guy, working hard but never seeing the field, aside from special teams, and that kept me on the team but not on the field. Finally, I got fed up with being the hard-working guy who never played much, so, during the off-season before my senior year, I started talking to myself. I told myself every day when I woke up, and every day before work-outs, "I am a starter. I will start at running back this year." And it worked, I ended up starting over a 2-year returning starter.
Now that I have established myself as an arrogant meat-head, let me tell you why it worked. Our subconscious mind is an extremely powerful, if not underestimated tool. (For more on this I would recommend reading "Blink" by Malcom Gladwell). We are all programmed from an early age by a variety of external sources. As children we are completely reliant on other people to tell us about the world and about ourselves.
The problem is that the vast majority of that conditioning has been negative. By the time the average person growing up in the average home turns 18, he/she has been told no, or that he/she could not do something over 148,000 times. In fact, negativity is so programmed into our programming that experts estimate that 77% of our thoughts are negative, counterproductive or work against us in some way. To carry the idea further, medical researchers say that 75% of illnesses are self-induced. Through some complex connection between our mind, body and emotions, we become our thoughts. Our subconscious believes whatever it has been told through all of the conditioning it has received, which has mostly been negative, whether it is true or not. The Bible says "As a man thinketh so is he."
I loathe the vast majority of self-help books, and this is why: they don't work. They deal with external solutions instead of attacking the root of the problem. How many people do you know who have tried to change their lives through some external modification such as a new car, home, career, or relationship? It just doesn't work because the change doesn't occur at the root of the problem, which is in our minds. Whatever we put into our mind, in some form or another will come out of our mind in the some form or another.
Every thought we think, every conscious or unconscious thought we say to ourselves, is translated into electrical impulses which, in turn, direct the control centers in our brains to electrically and chemically affect and control every motion, every feeling, every action we take, every moment of every day. Whatever thoughts you have programmed into yourself, or have allowed others to program into you, are affecting, directing, or controlling everything about you and here's why:
1. Programming creates beliefs
2. Beliefs create attitudes
3. Attitudes create feelings.
4. Feelings determine actions.
5. Actions create results.
We have been programmed by everything around us, media, culture, parents and friends, but it is time for us to take responsibility for our own minds, to plot our own course. For us to decide who we will be. What you tell yourself about yourself will eventually become yourself. You can use self talk to speak to habits, situations, attitudes or social situations. Because of the power of the subconscious, we can take control and evoke a greater change within us than we have before that possible. You can be whoever you want to be, you just have to tell yourself that you are that person.
Jesus warns that we should "take every thought captive." Listen to what you say to yourself over the course of a couple of days. Then write out the opposite of the negative things you tell yourself. Then add who you would like to become. Its that easy. When you talk to yourself, say it out-loud because spoken word has power (why did Jesus speak to the fig tree?) and say it in the present tense, as if you are already that person, your subconscious doesn't know the difference.
I have resolved to not only use this technique to achieve "success" but also to become a different person. I tell myself that I see the best in people, that I see the image of God in people because I often have a hard time recognizing that, this won't directly improve my physical life, but it will help me change the way I see people and help me see them the way their Creator sees them, it will also influence how I treat them. Not to hyper-spiritualize the issue because I will also be using it to achieve some kind of success in pilot training.
Finally, tell yourself who God says that you are. Tell yourself that you are loved, tell yourself that are valuable, tell yourself that you are a saint. A bumper-sticker quote comes to mind which I think applies here, "be the change you desire to see in the world."
(None of these thoughts are my own, they were gathered from "What to Say When You Talk to Yourself", "Blink", and the good Book.)
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