Whose thoughts are you thinking?
Some of the most important conversations you will ever have are conversations you have with yourself.
That’s why it's so important to pay attention to what you are telling yourself, especially what you're telling yourself about yourself.
There's power in words. We begin to identify with what we're told about ourselves and it doesn't really matter the source. If you hear something often enough, there is a great likelihood that you will start to believe it.
The dangerous thing about conversations we have with ourselves is that we're often not aware of them, let alone being aware of the content of those conversations.
You might be thinking, ‘Look, I just want you to tell me about how to confidently stand up at my job during the big meeting at the end of the year, and kill it when I speak to the group.’ Hold your horses. This is directly related to that. I want you to become aware of those internal conversations because if you are feeding yourself negative statements and beliefs about you then that will undermine your confidence and directly affect your interactions with other people.
Are you regularly saying things like. ‘Ah, I am so stupid!’ or ‘Oh, I am always screwing things up’ ‘Or oh, my face is so fat.’ ‘Or I'm never gonna get this right!’ ?
If you are, then you are undermining all of the other work you're doing here and elsewhere to build your competence so that you can have the life you want and desire and deserve.
The first step in dealing with this issue is to become aware of your internal conversations and their content. I've pointed it out. Now, it's time for you to put in the effort to pay attention.
The next step is to identify the source of those statements. Are they something that originated with you and you really believe or is it just something that you've heard someone else said about you over the years and you've let it into your regular rotation of thoughts.
Once you've identified that, then the next step is sorting out whether those thoughts or beliefs or statements are true.
More than likely-- they're not. Most likely they’re habitual patterns that have developed while we weren't paying attention. Now that you're paying attention, you can halt those thoughts
when you notice them arising and take some of the steam out of them.
With enough of this practice, you can give yourself a much better chance of feeling true confidence when you stand up in front of an audience of your peers or your church members or whoever else may be out there sitting, waiting to hear your words of wisdom
The more often you put your hand up in the face of that jerk and don't give it the opportunity to speak, the more you are developing new habits and new patterns that support what you want.