This week’s question from our portal “Ask Us Anything” comes from Lucia.
I’m having a problem with negative mental chatter. I know my job is to manage my mindset. Sometimes a negative thought will pop into my head, and I’ll be like, “Oh, thanks for showing up.” After a couple of days, I’m like, “I can’t believe I fell for that.” A sense of clarity comes over me.
But later down the road, something else will pop up. And the mental chatter comes back again. It seems real, until it doesn’t. How do you shorten the process of that chatter and the pity party that comes with it?
New results. You shorten the process by getting different results.
The only reason the chatter and the pity party can hang around is because you’re currently experiencing results you don’t want. So, if you change the results you’re getting, it won’t carry any weight with you at all.
This is something every person experiences, because the chatter
doesn’t ever completely go away.
The idea is to get really clear on what productive chatter looks like, versus unproductive chatter. The unproductive chatter, you simply ignore. There’s no other strategy. You ignore it.
We all have an incredible ability to ignore. It’s about learning how to control your focus.
I have chatter that goes on in my head every day. I just don’t pay any attention to it. I used to say things back to it, but not anymore.
The idea is that you never say anything to it.
Remember Emerson’s rule—anything you give energy to grows. It doesn’t matter what the energy is. If you give it positive or negative energy, it will grow.
Give the chatter no attention whatsoever.
Instead, confirm the opposite of what it’s telling you. State what you DO want in your life verbally.
I did that for several years. I used to do it from the stage at Art of Success Summit. I’d stomp across the stage and yell at the top of my lungs, “Clients are coming in every day, in every way, easily and effortlessly! I’m making sales all day, every day!”
I would do that for 10 minutes at a time. I would also stomp around my house, putting as much emotion, energy, and my body into it—as I could.
That was confirmation of the way I wanted it to be, versus the voice in my head that said: “It’s not going to happen. That person said no. That other person didn’t return your call. You didn’t get an email back from them.”
All of that chatter would come up, and I wouldn’t pay any attention to it. Instead, I would confirm what I wanted.
After a while—between the combination of that and the actual reality of what I was manifesting—those voices calmed way down. I don’t have to do that anymore.
