“Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have: it depends solely upon what you think.” – Dale Carnegie

Did you know you are constantly talking with yourself? In fact self-talk is a continual and integral part your life. As soon as you wake up in the morning you start talking to yourself and you don’t stop until you fall asleep at night. Talk, talk, talk, you do it in your mind all day! Who would’ve thought you had so much to say?

Positive self-talk is very powerful and helpful. When you regularly use it amazing things can happen. On the other hand negative self-talk is extremely disempowering. When you use it on a regular basis it can make your life much more challenging than it needs to be.

Your choice of negative or positive self-talk will either build you up or tear you down.  The problem is that many people have a constant stream of negative thoughts flowing through their heads. What many people either don’t know or forget is getting and staying positive can be simple when you control your thoughts.

The Power of Positive Thinking

You can control your thoughts by monitoring what you say to yourself on a habitual basis. Like much of who you are, your style of self-talk is a habit that has been molded by your experiences and environment. Just imagine how your life could change if you were able to alter your self-talk into something more supporting and encouraging.

The great news is that you can change your self-talk and start living a more positive life today! Positive thinking can be a regular part of your life! There are activities you can practice that can help you shift your habitual thoughts from negative to positive.

If you want to put the power of positive thinking to work in your life start practicing these activities regularly and see how your life can change!

1. Uncover How Your Negative Self-Talk Manifests Itself

Make a list of what you are saying to yourself on a regular basis. Whenever you find yourself saying something negative put that phrase on your list. For the next week, write down everything you say to yourself that isn’t supportive, regardless of whether or not you think it’s true.

Here is a partial list of things you might be telling yourself:

“I could never do that.”

“My life sucks.”

“That woman would never want to talk with me.”

“He’s too good for me.”

“Everything I do turns out terrible.”

2. Decide Which Negative Self-Talk Phrases Are Affecting You Most

Which of the things you’ve been telling yourself have the greatest negative impact on your sense of happiness and, ultimately, your life? List your negative self-talk phrases in order, from greatest negative impact to least. You want to this for two reasons. One, so you understand which of the phrases is most disempowering and two, so you can start working on those phrases first!

3. Create Positive Phrases

Now that you’ve made your list of negative self-talk phrases you’re going to change them. You’re going to convert at least the first 10 phrases on your list into positive self-talk phrases. If you’re really feeling motivated you can rewrite as many as you like.

It doesn’t matter if you presently believe the new, positive idea you just need to start getting your thoughts moving in a positive direction. An easy way to do this is to simply change your old, negative phrase into a positive version. For example, “I could never do that” changes to, “I can do anything I set my mind to.”

4. Cancel, Cancel

In order to change your thinking from negative to positive you need to change your habitual self-talk. Each time you catch yourself engaging in a negative self-talk phrase from your list, you need to do two things. First tell yourself, “cancel, cancel”. Second substitute the old phrase for one of your new positive self-talk expressions.

In order for this to work you have to be diligent in your monitoring. Since you have made a habit of talking to yourself negatively at first this new practice will require a lot of attention. The good news is that over time, the positive things you say to yourself will become your new, habitually way of talking to yourself.

5. Work on Your Whole List

After you’ve conquered your 10 most negative items, take a look at your list and consider how it would improve your life to change those remaining negative self-talk phrases. What you might find is after you change your first 10 phrases you may have formed such positive thought patterns that the rest of the phrases might not really be applicable anymore!

Staying Positive

Psychologists will tell you that anything you hear over and over again you will start to believe. So to control your thoughts and stay in control you need to control what you hear.

Since your self-talk is always going to be with you, you might as well decide to control it and make it positive. The first step in this process is to monitor what you habitually say to yourself and the thoughts and feelings you get as a result. Then take the necessary steps to change your self-talk for the better.

As with all habits, changing the way your talk to yourself will take some effort but as your regular self-talk begins to change you’ll begin to notice a tremendous boost to the way your feel about yourself and your overall sense of happiness. I guarantee it will be worth it. Why not get started today?

Wil Dieck is a life and health coach and the founder of Total Mind Therapy . You can sign up here to receive these positive thinking tips delivered by e-mail weekly