by Ian Sharp

Created on: September 14, 2007

There's a saying that talking to yourself is the first sign of madness - and that replying to yourself confirms the diagnosis. Well here's some good news - we all talk to ourselves. It's only a sign of madness if we're all mad in some way (a possibility I'm not ruling out by the way).

Working as a Success Coach I find I rapidly need to address the issue of internal dialogue with most of my clients - yes, talking to themselves. Sometimes that dialogue remains inside, and some people even go as far as speaking the words out loud in public. The precise way in which your internal dialogue expresses itself really doesn't matter. What does matter is what you're saying to yourself and how much you believe in what your dialogue tells you.

This issue arises with many clients because, when I'm coaching people to move up to the next level of their success, I need to look at anything that is holding them back. By definition, they're stuck in some area of their life or career or they wouldn't be seeing me. And, once we've got down to those issues, the really interesting part arrives. So often - actually I would say without exception - negative self dialogue is at the root when people feel held back.

Let's get practical about this. It's time to tune in to your self dialogue. Think about something you want to do, yet so far haven't found the confidence to actually get done. It could be writing your first article for Helium, or it could be running a marathon. It could be anything because only you truly know you. Think about that part of your life now. Notice what you hear in your head as you think. What is your little voice saying to you?

"You'll never be able to do it." "Who do you think you are, people like you don't do that sort of thing." "You'll fail just like you fail at everything else."

Now, your internal voice may have an altogether more positive tone and that's great. Perhaps you've consciously trained it to be positive? That's what I did to mine. If you recognized those or similar negative phrases, though, here's a couple of ideas. The first seems too simple to work but it really does. Dr.Richard Bandler, the co-creator of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) recommends in his seminars just telling your voice to "shut the f* up". Do that often enough and your voice will fade away - well, you'd probably go a little quiet if someone was telling you to be quiet in no uncertain terms wouldn't you?

The other method is to change the voice. Notice how it sounds. Is it your own voice? Perhaps that of a parent or sibling? Someone, somewhere, who has ever told you you're not good enough. Now think about watching a cartoon on television and the funny little voices some characters have - Mickey Mouse maybe, or one of the characters from Scooby Doo. Replace your internal voice with the character that makes you laugh, so that you hear all that negative stuff in the cartoon voice. You can't take it seriously now, can you? How could you believe Mickey Mouse telling you you're not good enough?

Of course, when I'm working with clients we can take all of this much further and get rid of negative internal dialogue permanently. These two ideas will get you on the road to real success, both with any issues around this you have and with the whole of your life. Here's to freedom. Go for it!

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