Spirituality/General: Feature Article: Watch Your Language - It's More Important Than You May Think! by Anne Marshall

We always move towards what we picture most strongly in our minds regardless of whether it's in our best interest or not. This is really important to understand when we want to make some positive change for ourselves and this article will help you understand why.

How we 'talk' to ourselves in our head is called our self-talk and all too often it can become self-depreciating or negative, eventually leaving us lacking in confidence and feeling low.

So consider what your self-talk has been like recently. Are you using entirely positive statements about yourself, or does your inner mental chatter contain some negative words too such as 'not' or 'won't'.

Let me give you an example here. Did you ever play that game at school when someone said to you "do not think of a pink elephant"?

What happened?

Most likely you ended up thinking of the very thing you wanted to avoid, in this case a pink elephant! This is because our minds cannot process a 'negative' concept without first of all bringing into focus whatever is to be avoided. In other words the mind has got to call up an image of something before it can process the command to dismiss it.

We always move towards what we picture most strongly in our minds regardless of whether it's in our best interest or not. This is really important to understand when we want to make some positive change for ourselves. For example, it's all to easy to say "I won't do this" or "I'm not going to do that" but in actual fact, all you are doing is focusing your attention on what you actually want to stop doing or avoid. The trick here is to keep all your language positive and focus your attention completely on what you do want rather on what you are trying to avoid!

So my question to you today is how could you change your language to set yourself up for even greater well being and contentment?

After all what you say about yourself and to yourself, will eventually become a self-fulfilling prophesy if you repeat it often enough . So it's worthwhile taking a few moments to scan your self-talk and any negative words or 'labels' that you may have given yourself or been given in the past and then deliberately changing them for something more positive.

For example if your habitual self talk regularly included statements such as "I will never be really successful" try modifying this to " I have not been successful up until now" and then as soon as you can change it to something really positive such as "I am becoming more successful all the time". It's well worth taking a few moments every now and again to check the quality of your self talk to make sure that it is purely positive.

After all your subconscious mind will always go to work on your behalf to create exactly what you tell it to!