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Meeting You

We meet and greet others all day long, yet how often do we stop and ask ourselves what's been going on lately. The mind is unfortunately a fickle friend; it needs consistently active cognitive / emotional awareness to maintain a healthy relationship. If we let all this "self talk" slide, the emotional bank becomes lazy and employs repression mode, sneaking things under the mat - - the mat being the human psyche in this instance.

Answering yes to any of the following questions indicates you need some "self talk" time:

* Does speaking about yourself make you anxious?
* Is "what are your strengths / weaknesses?" your most dreaded interview question?
* Would friends describe you as either extremely introverted or extroverted?
* Are you often afraid of saying or doing the "wrong" thing?
* In social situations do you tend to ramble unconsciously?
* When under pressure will you copy or agree with a friend?
* Do you seek rejection; typically evident in the "bad boy" fixation
* Is looking at your appearance a habit?
* Is looking at your appearance a painful experience?

The reality is however, who doesn't? There is not one single individual on this planet that knows every aspect of themselves inside out. If every parent sat down for a good chat with their subconscious every time they snapped at their child, well we'd be a super nation with citizens of extreme emotional IQ. Through their socialization, some people are more naturally inclined to have positive, constructive conversations with themselves, so much co that it is completely unconscious. For others, we need to learn or relearn this ability.

Some useful "self talk" activities:

1) Test Yourself: imagine you are in a speed dating program or a function. Out loud, introduce yourself (to yourself). What would you say? Alternatively, for those of us that seem to exist more in the writing world than the physical, use the common author's trick of creating a blurb before commencing a novel. Write a blurb on you.
(This is a more shallow exercise, good for starting off. Use this activity in between later steps to monitor your progress.)

2) Draw Yourself: I don't care if you failed art in preschool, invest in a pencil and draw you. Artists name self portraiture as the hardest of the creative feats not for the technical skill involved, rather the struggle faced in distinguishing between what we see in reality and what our mind remembers or creates for itself. Knowing your physical self is key to understanding the confines of

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