Friday, July 5, 2013

My own brand of negative self-talk

Today, I was reading a blog post by Linda Ursin about negative self-talk. In it, she mentioned that negative self-talk tends to rear its ugly head when people are trying to lose weight. Now in my case, I have never needed to lose weight--I have been dangerously underweight for most of my life.

(This is one of the few times in my life that I have been at a healthy weight.)

First, I came from a really poor family, and learned to ignore hunger as a kid. Then I worked twenty years in food service where you would think that you would actually get to eat; but if you are a good employee, your breaks are few and far in between. Then I spent several years as a poor unemployed college student living off of student loans. Now, I am a self-employed writer...and so far, I have seen little evidence that there are tables laden with food any place in this particular profession.

And I am good at ignoring hunger. For instance, it wasn't until seven hours into my day today that I realized that I hadn't eaten anything yet. Unless, you count the one can of soda I had. And my wife tells me that the can of soda doesn't count.

But enough about that problem...this post is supposed to about my own personal brand of negative self-talk.

My own personal brand of negative self-talk comes in the form of "I am too stupid to figure that one out" (IQ is the upper five percent of the population); "No one would be interested in reading that" ("It is a box of clowns!!! Everyone run for your lives!!!"); "The only proper type of writing that one should practice is the literary kind" ("Gee, I have made over three hundred and fifty dollars on a three thousand word erotic short story that took me less than ten hours to finish and self-publish").

My negative self-talk kept me in burger flipping jobs that I loathed, made me positive that I was going to fail college (ended up with two bachelor degrees), and make me have anxiety attacks about the fact that my business is going to fail and that my cats will starve (please note that my cats have no food issues other than the one where they skraff down a dish of their favorite food real fast, and then proceed to barf everywhere because their tummy is upset).

So what is your negative self-talk? What has it prevented you from doing? And can you send me a doughnut?

3 comments:

  1. My negative self talk keeps me from finishing novels. And it sucks! 0 <- the best I can do about the donut situation. ;)

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  2. I think for me things process quicker by allowing them...including anything negative. It wasn't always that way, but the fact that I am dealing with cancer makes me acutely aware of the amount of energy some things take...and I am unwilling to feed them. I don't see things so much as "negative self-talk" these days, as much as I see it as "allowing reality." I guess the difference might be to the degree that it rules your life and makes decisions for you...and things have changed much since my diagnosis. I love the sound of making money writing erotica. How awesome for you. :) I can see where there might be some discordance. There are times I have some of my own, but these days I just keep going.

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  3. My negative self talk is all about how im not as good as(insert my idol) & need to work a lot more before I can charge enough to make a living from photography. Then I tell myself that because I dont have xy&z maybe I should charge even less. But I know I have taken great photos that people love it just doesnt sink in enough for me to be bold in showing my work

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Thank you for stirring the pot. Please remember that I moderate comments on posts older than thirty days because I had trolls invade in the past. And it took forever to get their smell out of the carpet.