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CHANGE PROCESS
"Self - Talk"
Mental Health is having a "sound mind." A colleague once wrote these three words in a connected circle: --Feelings--Thoughts--Behaviors--. She said that each one influences the others throughout our lives. After years of practice I have come to believe and agree that how I feel and behave, and how my relationships fare, moment-by-moment, depend on the thoughts I am listening to inside my head - my "self-talk." In 1644 AD, Rene Descartes wrote the well-known adage: "I think, therefore I am."
If we consider that our internal dialogue may be the key, we should pay close attention to what we are saying to ourselves. What I say privately to myself determines how I FEEL, and how I shall BEHAVE (act, or speak). What I am saying to myself definitely affects my life, my relationships, my family, and my work. It also directs the course of my future.
We become what we are envisioning. Inside our head, words and images coexist. If I remind myself that certain things were unfair, bad, or my fault, I will be speaking a negative vision of my future, and will most likely be drawn toward negative experiences and other confirmations. For example, to say "he/she will never change," or "I am such a _____," will, most likely, become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
We need to pay attention to what we are telling ourselves if we want a sound mind. What we speak is what is in our hearts, and it is what we come to "believe." Our beliefs do not have to be rational. We choose a belief and THEN find evidence to support it. If we speak as victims, or as being controlled by circumstances or others, or if we speak of the futility of the future, we will orient ourselves into the very same kind of future experience.
Positive change (improved mental health) is most quickly produced by speaking healthy/healing things to ourselves. A "sound mind" pays attention to its self: its own speech patterns, and then corrects what it would like to believe, say, and see. I am what I choose to believe and speak (to myself and others).
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