Boomer women are prone to remembering the good and the bad from all of their life. They use past experiences to gauge the response and behavior to new information and actions. Boomers can almost always look back into their memory and find a correlation for the present.
What are you telling yourself? Remember your favorite 45 record. You played it over and over and over until the grooves were worn out. Boomer women do the same with their self talk; play the negatives over and over and over until the groove is so deeply set that it takes almost an act of Congress to change! Well not really, but you get the picture. You change your self talk just as you would if someone bumped your record player and scratched your favorite 45. A scratched 45 was no longer useful so you threw it away and bought another.
“Buying” another way of thinking requires spending time really listening to your self talk, acknowledging what you’re saying and deciding to throw out the negatives and replace with a positive. Boomer women have lived long enough to know they are successful, creative, beautiful, lovable and capable. Reprogram your thinking and self talk by using your accomplishments to fill the grooves. You can choose to sing a NEW tune!
Great article, Inez! Something I’ve caught myself doing, and I know others do it to, is to think of any mistake or small setback in my life as “proof by example” of some negative self-talk thing. For example, when you drop something, respond by saying “I’m always so clumsy!” I challenge myself to find that “proof” of positive traits, and to “catch myself being good” to help counteract the self-destructive tendency.
I’d be interested to know what some of your other readers are doing to transcend their negative self-talk into a more success-oriented way of thinking.
Tracy, I like the way you recognize when you’re off track and how you handle getting from the negative to the success oriented way of thinking. Thanks so much for sharing.