You know you’re prepared. You’ve been studying for days on end, but you finally get to that exam and you think to yourself, “I’m probably going to fail.” Why is that? Our brains are so hardwired to think negative that we don’t even realize the magnitude of the effects on us.
Most of us would say we’re fairly positive people. We’ve all at least tried to fill our minds with positive thoughts, yet we’ve all caught ourselves doubting our abilities in certain tasks. Sometimes it’s just a quick comment about how you think you’re going to do on a quiz, but sometimes it’s more than that. Sometimes you believe it.
Self-doubt makes things significantly harder. We all have that little voice in our head. The one that analyzes everything we see and calls the shots on how we perceive certain situations. It’s that little voice that can controls how you see yourself.
The truth of it is, the more you talk to yourself negatively the more your brain starts believing it. Your thoughts slowly turn into facts and you start thinking about yourself with a grain of salt, with constant disbelief of your own capabilities. It changes your self-views and plummets your self-esteem. The remarks that may have just started as a joke now to seem to roll off your tongue subconsciously, and it doesn’t even bother you anymore because it’s already been made certain that it’s true in your mind. This takes a huge toll on your mental health. Mainly, your confidence.
The more of a habit this becomes, the more you become harsher and frankly, unfair to yourself. This can lead to not only low self-esteem but anxiety and depression issues. Leaving a mental scar, it’s always going to exist; the thoughts you once had about yourself are now constantly going to be in the back of your mind.
It’s something that’s become so common in adolescent behavior that it’s barely even noticed when someone mentions something about themselves in a negative way. We react as if it’s the new normal, because quite frankly it is. Self-talk is one of the main factors as to how you present yourself to others. It’s what determines how you uphold yourself. We remember every bad thing people have told us and we take it into consideration each time, and with each judgment, we notably lose parts of ourselves that we thought was great. Not only that, we start to expand on what was said. We overthink things, it’s just how it is.
Without any positive thoughts, we drown in our own words. It changes everything, from how we see things to how we act. That’s why it’s extremely important to push through the negativity and overwrite what you may already be thinking of yourself and replace it with positive talk. Try writing down the bad thoughts you have about yourself. Afterwards, go through each of them and talk yourself through why you think that and why it isn’t true.
Finding a neutral between being too positive and too negative is in truth, harder than it comes off. Expecting everything’s going to be easy is unrealistic but so is expecting everything with a pessimistic outlook. Really the only thing that matters is how you see yourself, not how others do. It’s important to bring awareness to negativity and help those have a better attitude towards themselves.
For further help try these physical exercises that have been proven to help stop negative thoughts.
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