Episode 11: How your Inner Chatter Shapes your Outer Reality

You're likely all too familiar with the constant stream of chatter that goes on inside your head. 

But are you aware of the power it exerts over your life?

In this episode I share the extent to which your inner chatter helps and hinders your progress and how to take back the control so you can enlist your self-talk to help you move forwards in your life.

Episode highlights:

• 60,000 thoughts a day of which 80% are negative!
• What positive self-talk can help you achieve (spoiler alert - anything)
• The impact of anxiety on your ability to take action
• Why negative inner chatter is so destructive to self-confidence
• 5 Strategies to help you calm your inner critic
• How to use affirmations (that actually work) to boost your frame of mind

I get very excited about sharing this work because it's so damn effective, so I really hope you enjoy this episode!

Watch the replay of my 5 Steps to Unshakeable self-Confidence here.

Connect with me on instagram and let me know what your biggest takeaways from this episode are @emmaobriencoach

If you've got big goals, but you're totally stuck about where to start, I invite you to book a complimentary strategy call with me here.

We'll uncover what's holding you back from the goals you want to achieve and you'll leave the call with actionable steps to get you moving in the right direction.

For the tea on me, how I work, who I coach and the packages I offer, please visit my website - www.emmaobriencoach.com

You can also connect with me on Instagram @emmaobriencoach where I share an abundance of tools, strategies and brilliant content, you might also see the occasional dog.

Check out two of my FREE online workshops:

My 7 Step Formula for Getting Unstuck

4 Ways to Stop Procrastination in its Tracks

Transcript

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Emma O'Brien: Hi, folks welcome to season 2. Episode 11 of the lemons and pineapples. Podcast today, I'm going to be sharing with you the power of self talk, and how your inner chatter creates your outer reality, and what you can do about it before I jump in. I wanted to share in case you hadn't seen

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Emma O'Brien: that earlier this week. I ran a live masterclass, which was 5 steps to unshakable self confidence and self talk was one of the pieces I touched on in that master class. So if self confidence is something you struggle with, you would like to understand how to increase your confidence level, so you can really start to step out of your comfort zone. I highly recommend going and watching the replay of

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Emma O'Brien: the master class. I'm going to pop the link in the show notes. You can also access it at Emma O'briencoach. Dot com forward, slash, self dash, confidence.

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Emma O'Brien: We've all experienced it. That constant stream of thoughts running through our minds. Sometimes it's a really helpful ass, kicking pep talk, and sometimes it is a ruthlessly vicious inner critic.

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Emma O'Brien: and this ceaseless internal dialogue holds tremendous power over our lives, it shapes our perceptions, it influences our emotions, and it ultimately molds our reality often with far greater influence than we realise

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Emma O'Brien: we have 60,000 thoughts a day. That is a hell of a lot of thoughts.

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Emma O'Brien: 80% of which are negative and 95% of which are repetitive.

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Emma O'Brien: Now that is a lot of inner chatter running rampant all over our minds and impacting our emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing, often without any in any conscious input from us.

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Emma O'Brien: I wanted to share with you a few of the ways that we are influenced by the conversations we have with ourselves to really bring this into your conscious awareness. So you can start to think about how what's happening inside your mind is affecting your life.

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Emma O'Brien: So positive self talk. Let's start with something good here. It boosts confidence when we are having encouraging and a thought, affirming thoughts, reinforcing our belief in our abilities.

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Emma O'Brien: especially when life feels tough. This is really powerful when we're able to cheer ourselves on and encourage ourselves, and learn from things that have perhaps not quite gone according to plan as opposed to being really viciously awful to ourselves. It makes a huge difference in your self confidence levels how you feel about yourself, and how you show up in the world.

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Emma O'Brien: Positive self talk improves performance. So many athletes and top performers will use positive self talk to enhance their performance and increase their focus.

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Emma O'Brien: and it reduces stress. So optimistic and objective thoughts can help us cope far better with stress and adversity, and

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Emma O'Brien: sharing this and and speaking this out loud. It seems really obvious, but most of us are missing the point with this, and really having our lives ruled by what is happening internally.

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Emma O'Brien: and the great thing about this is when you become aware of it, you have a choice to do something differently.

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Emma O'Brien: So let's talk a little bit about negative self-talk.

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Emma O'Brien: If you are constantly telling yourself you're an idiot, you're useless. You've messed up again. No wonder so and so didn't give you the job, and and so on, and so on, and so on. You can replace it with your own internal dialogue, which, unfortunately, I'm pretty confident won't be difficult for you to find, because most of us talk badly to ourselves. Negative self talk erodes, self-esteem, relentless self criticism leads to feelings of inadequacy and low self worth.

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Emma O'Brien: And of course, when we're feeling like that, this, we're far less likely to put ourselves forward for new opportunities. We're gonna stay stuck in a comfort zone. That's kind of completely our own creation.

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Emma O'Brien: It increases anxiety.

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Emma O'Brien: Negative self talk often is filled with pessimistic thoughts that really fuel the fire of anxiety and worry, and of course, the more anxious you are, and the more you worry the more you'll manage to collect up other anxious and worrisome thoughts I always look at. It

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Emma O'Brien: is a as a metaphor of being on the worry train, and as the worry train goes through the station it picks up more and more passengers more and more worried thoughts. Suddenly you were worrying about paying a credit card bill. And now you're worried about something you said to somebody in a kind of random conversation 10 years ago, and that's been added into the worry pile.

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Emma O'Brien: This is the kind of real power of our negative self-talk to completely derail us. To complete the train. Metaphor.

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Emma O'Brien: Negative self talk hinders our progress. Negative thinking creates mental barriers that prevent us from pursuing our goals. If you constantly tell yourself why, you're a massive loser. You aren't going to be stepping up and putting yourself out for a promotion. You're not going to send your Cv. Out. You're not going to take any risks that might

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Emma O'Brien: put you in the position where the inner critic and what it has to say to you actually becomes a reality.

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Emma O'Brien: So let's talk about really how this internal dialogue shapes what's happening externally.

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Emma O'Brien: So if, like many people, your inner narrative has been negative for most of your life changing. It requires effort, practice, and self compassion. This has been a journey I have been on. I am a very type, a person. I am very driven, and I have historically been incredibly hard on myself. I still am in many respects.

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Emma O'Brien: but having the awareness of what's happening inside my own mind, and how I've been talking to myself has helped me really shift it from being really quite hateful to far more objective, and I have seen myself progress far more in in my life. As a result.

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Emma O'Brien: if I was to

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Emma O'Brien: allow my inner critic to really go at me for this podcast for instance, I wouldn't put another episode out, because my inner critic has all sorts of things to say about this God. Listen to you, verbal. Listen to you, repeat yourself. You use the word so too many times.

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Emma O'Brien: And and and

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Emma O'Brien: however

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Emma O'Brien: I, my ability to put out a podcast. And my ultimate goal with sharing what I have to say, because I know it helps. Other people really overrides that. And I'm also able to look at it and say, it's just a podcast there are millions of podcasts out there. Nobody is listening, expecting this to be perfect. And if somebody listens to it, and it's like, oh, God, she says, too many times. I'm not listening again. So be it. If that is your deciding factor, please carry on.

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Emma O'Brien: and I think that is the big difference with it. I have stopped allowing my inner critic to hold me back in many areas of my life. Always a work in progress, of course, but it has I I have managed with some inner work to vastly improve it.

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Emma O'Brien: So let's talk some strategies about how you can start to really calm your own inner critic, and you can start to reshape the inner landscape and the chatter that's happening in your mind to harness the power of it. Because let's face it when we have these negative

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Emma O'Brien: self talk and inner critics, they're huge. It's a hugely powerful influence on our lives. So if this negative self talk and the inner chatter can stop us doing things. Imagine what positive self talk and an encouraging inner voice can do to help you really go after and get things to happen. It's the 2 sides of the same coin folks, so if you can harness it, it will help you.

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Emma O'Brien: The 1st thing is being aware of what's happening internally. So start paying attention to the thoughts that are running through your mind and identify the patterns of negativity. Perhaps your inner chatter ramps up to maximum level when you're attempting something new.

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Emma O'Brien: Simply observe it.

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Emma O'Brien: You might want a journal to track your thoughts and keep tabs on your progress, but just observe it coming up, observe it as if you were listening to an external conversation, and just watch it to start off with and become aware of what it has

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Emma O'Brien: to say, awareness, as with so many things in life, awareness is step one to making change and to getting a different result.

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Emma O'Brien: The second thing is to challenge your negative thoughts. So when you start to catch your negative thoughts, a great question to ask is is this true?

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Emma O'Brien: Consider whether your negative thoughts are based on facts or assumptions.

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Emma O'Brien: and look for evidence that contradicts the negative thought and consider alternative perspectives.

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Emma O'Brien: So if we have negative chatter coming up when you try something new.

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Emma O'Brien: and it's saying to you, oh, you're an idiot, you know. You shouldn't try new things because you never get it right. Well, I invite you to have a look back at all the times you've tried something new, and just to reflect on what has happened when you've tried something new. Have you failed every time? My guess is you haven't.

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Emma O'Brien: And when you can start to bank that positive evidence, it starts to give you a means of overriding the negative self-talk.

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Emma O'Brien: The 3rd thing is to reframe your thoughts, so replace the negative thoughts with positive, constructive ones. Instead of saying, I can't do this

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Emma O'Brien: try, saying, I might not be able to do this perfectly. Now, however, I can learn and improve with practice.

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Emma O'Brien: Reframing your thoughts helps to shift your mindset from a fixed negative perspective to a growth orientated

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Emma O'Brien: positive one, which is what we want. If we're moving through life in a progressive way, and if you want to be expanding your existence, and what's happening in your life?

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Emma O'Brien: The 4th one is to practice self compassion. Treat yourself with the same kindness and understanding you'd offer to a friend. If you have got a harsh and unkind inner critic that has got nasty little thoughts on. Repeat that you would never dream of saying to somebody else.

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Emma O'Brien: It's time to stop saying them to yourself, and to afford yourself the same respect and kindness you would give to a close friend or to a small child is another way of actually viewing it is. Would you talk to a small child in the way you're talking to yourself, and if the answer is no, it's time to stop.

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Emma O'Brien: and the 5th one is to use affirmations. Now I say this with a caveat, because I have opinions about affirmations. So I am going to share here how to create an affirmation that will actually work for you. Often people struggle with affirmations because you are fighting the reality of what you currently believe and what you need to do to make an affirmation work is, give yourself evidence that the affirmation is true. So select your most

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Emma O'Brien: nasty little negative thoughts, and list out 5 examples of how it is total Bs.

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Emma O'Brien: and then create an affirmation that spins it to the positive. Let's take, for example, a looping thought of. I always say the wrong thing.

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Emma O'Brien: Make a list of all the occasions where you've said exactly the right thing. So maybe when you've comforted a friend who has been in distress, and they have felt better

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Emma O'Brien: with what you've said. Maybe you've shared an idea at work that was implemented and positively received. Or maybe you've given someone a suggestion that has actually really helped them to move forward. And they've come back to you afterwards and said, Thank God, you gave me that piece of advice. It was so helpful.

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Emma O'Brien: Then create a positive statement with the evidence you have just gathered in mind, so that might switch. I always say the wrong thing to a positive affirmation of I know exactly what to say to add value.

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Emma O'Brien: That is an affirmation that you can believe in.

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Emma O'Brien: You

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Emma O'Brien: get to choose your inner narrative, and when you become aware of the ways in which your self talk is keeping you stuck, or perpetuating your anxiety or unhappiness. Half the battle is won, I promise

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Emma O'Brien: elevating your experience of life and stepping up for yourself is a choice, and feeling better, and taking action towards your goals

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Emma O'Brien: starts in your mind.

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Emma O'Brien: This is some work that I really love doing with clients. Thought work is so powerful.

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Emma O'Brien: Most of the circumstances, and the events and the feelings that are showing up in our lives are as a result of thinking we have been doing.

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Emma O'Brien: and if you're thinking is unhelpful, what's showing up in your life will be unhelpful. Conversely, as I've touched on. If you can shift that thinking into really working for you, you will find that the external landscape of your life really starts to change, but it starts with shifting what's happening internally, and that starts with the beliefs and the thoughts that you are running. So if this sounds interesting to you.

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Emma O'Brien: I will invite you, hop over to Instagram. Pop me a DM. Send me a voicemail, and let's chat about what's happening for you, and how I might be able to support you with some thought work to get you really shifting out of a negative state into a positive state.

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Emma O'Brien: And of course I also invite you to go and watch the replay of my self confidence. Masterclass.

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Emma O'Brien: The link is in the show notes. Thank you very much for joining me today. I will see you same time next week bye, for now.