Ep 3: Mastering Your Inner Dialogue: Transforming Negative Self-Talk for a Positive Life

Welcome to the Neuro Masters podcast, the place to reinvent yourself, master your mind, and change your life.

Internationally recognized speaker, coach, and trainer, Reg Malhotra, will teach you tools to improve your mindset, change your behaviors, and let your relationships thrive. Are you ready to unlock the power of your mind?Here’s your host, Reg.

Reg Malhotra:     Welcome to episode three of the Neuro Masters Podcast. My name is Reg, and over the last two episodes, we have started a conversation around mindset, around rewiring your mind so that you are able to create a life that you want.

And we’ve touched upon many different things such as relationships and emotions, and we’re going to continue on that journey.

Today, I want to bring another very common problem, a common issue, and a question that is frequently posed to me by many people that I work with in one capacity or another, and that is the idea of negative self-talk.

People often say to me, “Reg, why do I find myself having negative conversations in my mind? Why do I find myself worrying and why do I find myself hearing myself saying things about myself that are not very nice?”

So, this concept or this aspect is what we can call as negative self-talk.

And really, this is a result of an ongoing or continual focus on things that we don’t want. Let me repeat that again. Most people focus a lot of the time and energy, they focus it on what they don’t want.

Why would one do that? Why would one spend time and energy focusing on what they don’t want? Very counterintuitive, isn’t it?

But the reality is, for most people, it becomes an automatic, unconscious process, it becomes a pattern. It happens by itself or so it appears.

And one of the most important things in order for one to move towards what they want, create a life they want, have more positive things happening around them, is to focus on what they do want.

You see, what happens is over life, we collect a number of, say, negative experiences and things that didn’t go right, and we have all these references in our mind, so we often go back to what happened in the past as we are thinking about doing something, as we are thinking about changing something, as we are thinking about going after something, and commonly our brain, will go to the past to find references.

And if we have through our language, through our communication, through our intentions, through our focus spent a lot of times on things that have gone wrong in the past, then our brain would also do the same, more of the same. It’ll go back and bring up past references.

So, negative self-talk is really a result of fear. It can manifest itself as a worry. It’s an outcome of running pictures and images of things that can go wrong.

You see, whatever we see in our mind is a preview of life’s coming attractions. So, if we run pictures in our head of what could go wrong, it would give feelings — feelings of something we don’t want, it would bring up fears of what would happen if things go wrong.

It’s the same as most people would find themselves saying, “What if it doesn’t work?” And a small change, like what if it does work could give completely different pictures.

See, the brain or the subconscious mind for that matter is a pictogram. Most of what we are thinking or what we are hearing or what we are focusing on represents itself generally in pictures.

And these pictures, they can then give rise to feelings. See, there’s a very close association between pictures and feelings.

In fact, I want you to think about this: anything that you have in your life today that you wanted, you would’ve run pictures of that in your mind first. Think about it; anything.

If you are in a relationship today, it is likely that you ran pictures or you saw movies of yourself being in a relationship. If you have a certain type of a car, it’s more than likely that you ran pictures of not just the car, but you being in the car, driving the car, and getting the associated feelings from that.

So, we wanted to keep this very, very simple for you. The reality is that when you focus on what you want, you end up running pictures of that.

Similarly, if you focus on what you don’t want, if you spend a lot of time creating pictures of what you don’t want, one way or another, our brain will notice people, circumstances, opportunities, and everything else to confirm the occurrence of that.

So, a lot of people say, “What you think, you become, wherever focus goes, energy flows.” All of that is to say that if you run pictures of what you don’t want more of the time, then you start moving towards that.

So, whether you focus on what you want or what you don’t want, you’re going to see more of that. You’re going to experience more of that because your brain is primed. It’s predispositioned to look for that. This is a very, very important principle, very important principle.

Even when we think of the law of attraction, whether it works or not, the principle is quite sound. The principle is what you focus on is what you get. But I’m breaking this down a little bit more and saying, “Well, what are you running pictures of? Where are you getting these pictures from?”

Now, imagine if you started to run pictures of what you want instead, imagine what would happen if you ran pictures of what you want. So, if you wanted to have a particular type of food item, you’re likely to run pictures of that food item.

Why would you create pictures of something that is not what you want? But that’s what we do when it comes to our life, goals and dreams.

See, a lot of times we are creating because we are focusing on, “What if it doesn’t work? What could go wrong? What if this happens?” In fact, we end up talking more about the obstacles than we talk about the solutions.

It’s a very interesting phenomena and very, very true for many, many people. Now, why would people do that? You see, a lot of times people are basing their future on the past, and there is some truth to that.

When you think about insurance companies, they don’t ask you based on what you’re going to do, they’ll look at your history. And if you want to predict someone’s next five years with 95% accuracy, you only have to look at the last five years. Why is that?

Again, it comes back to we are predispositioned to run pictures of what we are familiar with, what has already happened. Now, this is the great problem and the great opportunity.

Can we run pictures of what we want? Well, the resounding answer is yes. The decision comes first. You are to decide that I’m going to focus on what I want.

Next step, once you’ve decided that, you need to develop a way of doing it, and then you got to practice it until it becomes automatic, it becomes unconscious.

You see, anything we do enough times, eventually, it becomes automated, it becomes unconscious. That is in fact, one of the purposes of the subconscious mind or the unconscious mind, is to take a behavior, take a particular task, take a particular pattern, even a thought process, and make it automatic so that we don’t have to put in the work, and it just happens.

So, if you can decide to run pictures and movies and focus on what you want, and then do that enough of times and develop a way to do that, then you are basically creating a program for yourself.

Everything we do is a program. Why not create programs that are going to take us where we want, that are going to give us the life we want? It’s a very, very interesting topic and a topic that we’re going to explore a lot over this show or many different episodes.

And one of the things I want to share with you today is how do you create pictures? What is one of the best ways to do that? So, here’s what one can do.

Commonly, when we think about what we want, we may not have a proper structure around it.

Yes, the desire may be strong enough that we bring up the picture, and once we have the picture, we get some good feelings, and it could start moving us in that direction. But a more structured way is to ask yourself, what specifically do you want?

When you know that, what I’d like you to do is take another step and ask yourself what will you see, hear, and feel when you have it?

You see, just by you asking yourself this question, what will I see? Your brain is going to create pictures, or you are creating pictures. What will you hear? Now, you’re creating sounds. What will you feel? You’re creating feelings in the now of something that you want happening in the future.

Now, this is the process of getting your brain associated with what it is you want. You see, the brain does not know the difference between real and imagine.

Think about it, you could imagine something right now, and it could create a feeling in your body as though it’s actually happening now.

So, when it comes to focusing on what you want, it is a very powerful thing to do. That is to ask yourself, “What will I see? What will I hear? What will I feel?” Because you’re creating that image, that idea with more clarity in your head.

The next question you want to ask yourself is, “How will I know when I have it? What is your evidence procedure? What needs to happen for you to know you got it?”

Again, we’re talking about doing this in advance, so your brain has already seen what is the last thing that needs to happen for you to know you got it? What is your proof? Once you’ve done that, you can even go deeper than that.

You can ask yourself, “What will this allow you to do? Or what will this allow you to be? What is the benefit of it?” See, questions lead to answers, and the right questions lead to the right answers, and the wrong questions lead to the wrong answers.

So, when we ask questions in this pattern, we are allowing ourselves to create the future in the mind. And if you create it in the mind, there is a much greater chance for you to be motivated to go towards it, to see things, to see opportunities, to notice opportunities.

I’m going to talk about this in another episode, how your brain actually filters information. We cannot see, hear, and feel everything all at the one time that is coming towards us, but your brain has a function to limit what it does see, hear, and feel. So, we’ll talk about that.

But for now, what’s important is that you internalize this concept, this idea that you can deliberately, by asking certain questions, by putting your attention towards a certain area, you can start the process of creating pictures of what you want in finer detail.

Now, next thing, you could go ahead and ask yourself; where, when, how, and with whom do you want it?

Again, this is a process of giving detail to your brain so that your pictures can become clearer. Because if you can see it in your head, you have the maximum chances of having it.

Think about it, anything you have in your life, you would have seen it in your head first. So, if you cannot see it in your head, the chances that you’re going to have it are low, very low, in fact, I would go ahead and say that.

The question for you is, are you seeing things that you want in your head or are you seeing things that you do not want in your head? It’s a very, very important question. And today, we’re talking about how we can maximize our ability to see things in our head that we want.

And next thing you can ask yourself is, “What do you have now and what do you need to get to your outcome?”

Again, this is a very strategic way of installing pictures that are going to have the ultimate impact of motivating you towards the outcome you want, because it’s not enough just to visualize, it’s not enough just to see it. It’s better if you can see it with great detail and with all associated components.

So, I hope you are going to take this on board. You’re going to go out there and think about the things that you want, and firstly, ask yourself, are you focusing on that or you’re focusing on not getting it, or the obstacles? What are you running pictures of?

Once you know that, I want you to deliberately and intentionally get on the process as discussed in this show of creating pictures of the thing you want as much detailed as possible, asking the questions that we’ve just outlined today. And then I would like you to practice it with as many things as possible.

In fact, think of your top goals and make sure you create a process to regularly run these pictures, regularly associate with the outcome, with the goal in great detail so that at some point, your brain automates it so that every day you wake up and you are more likely to run pictures of what you want.

I hope you enjoyed this show, submit any questions, any suggestions, any feedback, and we will see you very soon at another episode of the Neuro Masters Podcast.

Thank you for tuning in today. Are you ready to take the next step and find out what’s keeping you from reaching your goals and creating the life you want? Go to go.neuromastersacademy.com/gs-lp for a free transformational mini-workshop with Reg.

See you next week.