How negative self-talk and firmly held beliefs are holding you back

As humans, our default setting is a bias toward negative thinking. We tend to overestimate threats and underestimate opportunities, resources, accomplishments, and the positives. 

“Our brains are like velcro for negative thoughts and teflon for positive thoughts.” 

-Hardwiring Happiness, Rick Hanson

Often, these negative self-talk thoughts can be so subconscious that we don’t even realize they’re happening. We also automatically make them a fact, without challenging them or their validity. This can be majorly holding you back from achieving your goals, reaching your potential, feeling confident and secure, and exhibiting highly-effective competencies. This can also affect others because people with lower self-esteem tend to judge others more quickly. 

Common firmly held beliefs and negative self-talk: 

Work has to be a struggle to build character. (Aka, I need to struggle, it shouldn’t feel easy.)

I need to please everyone. 

I’m not good enough. 

I should be more successful than I am. 

I can’t fully be myself at work. 

I can’t be real friends with my coworkers. 

I can’t make money doing what I love. 

I should be further along. 

It’s too late to pursue my dreams. 

I don’t have enough experiences / credentials to do this. 

I’m not qualified enough. 

Other people my age have accomplished so much more than I have. 

I’ll never be a great leader. 

It’s all out of my control. 

Struggling is more noble than succeeding. 

Pay attention: which ones are you commonly telling yourself? What are the “shoulds” you are believing about yourself? Are these negative beliefs over-shadowing your accomplishments? How often and where are they showing up in your life? 

These firmly held beliefs/negative self-talk items come from: 

social conditioning (most likely from well-intentioned people); being told what you should do or what you should want 

conclusions you’ve made from past (dysfunctional) experiences

assumptions (what are you assuming?)

insecurities; inner critic, perfectionism 

childhood experiences 

personal filters

inability to distinguish fact from perception

lacking self-awareness that these thoughts exist or what they are

comparing ourselves to others 

How these thoughts affect you at work: 

They make you doubt yourself and feel insecure.

They prevent you from applying to certain jobs or going after promotions.

They keep you from reaching your full potential.

They affect how you come across to others, which could lower your chances of getting a new job, getting a promotion, or getting buy-in on an important initiative. 

It might be a reason why you procrastinate. 

When you’re not confident with yourself and your own abilities, it can have a negative effect on how you view others – passing judgment onto others as a way to compensate for your own opinion of yourself. When you’re in a leadership position, this can be detrimental for creating a high-trust, high-performing, cohesive team.

You might not be able to control your thoughts, but you can control your reaction to them and what you make them mean. And you can intentionally create new thought pathways with more constructive thoughts that serve you better (and those around you too). 

What can I do about this? The best thing you can do is: 

be aware; raise your awareness of these firmly held beliefs and negative self-talk and then 

challenge the belief/talk/assumption. Is it accurate? Does it make sense? How is it serving you? How is it serving others? What’s evidence for/against it? What’s a way you can reframe it so that it’s more rooted in the truth? What are more positive, intentional thoughts I can say to myself? What would you tell a friend if they told you their negative self-belief? Can you have more compassion for yourself? 

Bonus points if you write this out for yourself and reflect on it. My job as a coach is to work with people to identify and remove these filters and look at things in a different, more productive and compassionate way.