Manage your  self talk

Most of us think primarily with a combination of mental images and inner chatter - and get our feelings or emotions from this mental activity. Become aware of your thoughts and begin managing them and you will be directly influencing your emotions.

Pay attention to your negative self hypnosis. Begin to pay attention to your self-talk. That's the constant stream of chatter that goes on in your head (and mine, and everyone else's, by the way). Notice what you say to yourself and how you say it.

• Do you constantly criticise yourself inside your head ?
• Do you constantly criticise others?
• Do you complain about your life, your faults, or how life treats you?
• Do you internally rant about the injustices of life?
• Do you constantly tell yourself you're at your wits end?
• Do you tell yourself that you can't cope with this much longer
• Do you tell yourself that you'll fail at something?

Imagine that you had an invisible friend that followed you around all day, every day, and was constantly whispering comments like these in your ear! How would you feel at the end of a day.

But because you are doing this to yourself and have probably been running such mental programmes since childhood you no longer even notice them and, as a result, they will have a powerful impact on your mood and on your attitude towards yourself and towards life.

Our negative self-talk is pernicious and demoralising and debilitating. And because we are so used to it we don't consciously pay attention to it and therefore do not challenge it. It goes on and on in the background and the effect is that we are actually self suggesting a hypnotic process to feel bad!

Gently replace the negative self-talk

There is no point in adding to the inner stress and discomfort  by further criticising yourself "I must not say this etc" - that would be adding fuel to the fire.

Following your initial session each time you recognise that you are doing your self-criticising or self-undermining pause, you will begin to remind yourself that it's just that old habit you've got into, and that from now on you're changing this habit.

You will learn that the tone and words of your internal dialogue can work for you rather than against you, and having learned a new dialogue it becomes a force for positive change rather than

Use a very soft and patient inner tone of voice for this.

Your inner voice should sound as if you are calming an upset 2-year old! Reassure yourself. Calm yourself. Remind yourself of the rationales and facts of the situation. Remind yourself of the value of handing things in a cool, calm, and confident manner.

Doing this once or twice won't make a lot of difference. It takes  a while to replace the habits of a lifetime - but it's definitely worth doing so.