From this moment forward, I invite you to build your business and live your life deliberately. By this, I mean that you begin to analyze who you are being
daily that either supports your business, happiness, relationships and self-esteem or that detracts from them. Become vigilant to negative self-talk moment by moment as you go about your day. Your self-esteem and personal power will increase to the extent you can first recognize when your negative self-talker is speaking his nonsense and then reinterpret each thought and situation in a way that champions your self-image.
One tool to support you in your deliberate approach is a daily journal. A journal can be a spiral-bound notebook or hardcover log made expressly for this purpose. Choose your journal book with the expectation that you will treasure it for life as one of many volumes permitting you to reflect back on your personal development progress.
Your journal can be valuable for noting any observations about your business practices and personal effectiveness as you go about your daily conversations and inspire your team to achieve success. Include in your journal your daily action commitments, challenges, insights and breakthroughs (aha! experiences).
Begin by recording your observations to the following as you go about your day:
- Catch yourself in negative self-talk that sabotages your business success.
- Distinguish what is really so from the damaging story you decided about yourself that can be worked upon and improved.
- Note whenever you demand perfection of yourself, take rejection personally or blame yourself for things that are not your fault or beyond your control.
- Record any assumptions that others are judging you as harshly as you judge yourself. Separate out exactly what they said from what you think they meant that has you berating yourself. Create a new, empowering interpretation that gives you the benefit of the doubt.
- When you hear negative self-talk, ask yourself, “Is it possible that I am distorting what actually happened?
- Are you taking what others say personally? What other interpretation can you apply to these comments, assuming they are not directed at you?
- Are you comparing yourself to others unfavourably? How can you focus on your strengths instead? Acknowledge yourself for a positive trait every time you entertain a negative thought.
Also record your insights to the additional questions below at the end of each day:
- Did my thoughts and actions today reflect my values and commitments and contribute to building my growing self-esteem?
- What worked about today?
- What was missing that, if put into place, would support me in being the person I have declared myself to be?
- What was missing that would have helped my self-esteem and business productivity increase today?
- Was my focus on contributing to my prospect or in trying to look good?How will I make tomorrow better and more effective?
When you get into the daily habit of working on maximizing your personal strengths and effectiveness with others in all your communications and give up your right to beat yourself up for not being perfect, you will empower yourself and others in the process.
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