How Your Thoughts Affect Your Life
At the root of living in passivity and avoidance is a form of negative self-talk that results in the same sense of helplessness and lethargy. This post walks you through how to stop negative self talk by recognizing common narratives that are preventing you from getting shit done.
The three most common narratives produced by negative self-talk share a common goal: trap you in feelings of helplessness and overwhelm that stop you from making an effort. This article describes negative self talk as “pessimistic, mean-spirited, or unfairly critical thoughts.”
You’re enticed to remain stagnant, settling into a hypnotic sense of comfort, ease, and security.
Negative self-talk most commonly deploys one of three narratives, each wielding its influence to slow or halt your effort:
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- Striving for unattainable perfection
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- Self-criticizing
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- Overcomplicating
When you accept the voices of negative self-talk as reality, you sacrifice your shot at fulfillment in exchange for temporary relief from difficulty, perceived or real.
Thoughts → Attitude → Behavior → Outcome
Ultimately, it is your behavior that is driving your life outcomes. So, you should simply change your behavior, right? Not exactly. Your behavior is influenced by your attitude, which is shaped by your thoughts. Here’s an example of how this plays out:
Situation: You have a deadline approaching for a difficult project at work. The stakes of the project trigger self-doubt and anxiety.
Thoughts: Negative self-talk has you questioning your ability to meet the deadline and produce good work. It presents scenarios about all the bad things that can happen if you fail.
Attitude: Your anxious thoughts contribute to overwhelm and stress. As a result, you are showing up fatigued, unmotivated, and mentally drained by a tumultuous head space.
Behavior: Due to fatigue and demotivation, you procrastinate on the project. You distract yourself from the fear of failure by focusing on non-essential tasks, rationalizing that you need to build your energy back up before doing the work.
Outcome: As a result of procrastination and avoidance, you miss the deadline. Your work quality suffers, and you receive negative feedback from your supervisor. This exacerbates your exhaustion and negative attitude, repeating a cycle of avoidance and inaction. This cycle might persist for weeks, months, or even years, causing compounded negative effects on your mental and emotional well-being. You might lose sight of the root cause, queuing up negative self-talk to assign blame to an inherent flaw within yourself. “I procrastinate because I’m lazy.” “I suck at my job.” “Something must be wrong with me because I am tired all the time.”
This example shows a cycle where we remain disconnected from our true needs and aspirations. Instead of addressing the underlying issues causing symptoms like fatigue and anxiety, we continue to operate mindlessly on autopilot, allowing negative thought patterns to run the show. Cycles like this are often understood as self-sabotage, but it’s also outright neglectful. When you shy away from the effort it takes to confront the root of debilitating thoughts, you are neglecting your life.
You can explore more about the attitude-behavior relationship in this research.
How to Stop Negative Self-Talk: Develop Self-Leadership
Now, here’s an example of how to pivot from negative self-talk into self-leadership:
Situation: You have a deadline approaching for a challenging project at work. The stakes are high, and you recognize that some anxiety is natural.
Thoughts: Negative self-talk has you questioning your ability to meet the deadline and produce good work. It presents scenarios about all the bad things that can happen if you fail.
You acknowledge the pressure. “I can hear myself creating scenarios designed to scare me.” You accept your brain’s process for protecting you, while affirming your ability to do hard things. “Good looking out, but I can handle this,” you tell yourself. Thoughts like, “I’ve handled tough projects before,” and “I’ll take this step by step,” ground you.
Attitude: Constructive thoughts foster an optimistic and focused attitude. Even if you still don’t feel particularly motivated or energized, you recognize the task as achievable and begin to approach it with clarity and preparation.
Behavior: With an action-oriented mindset, you take proactive steps. You create a plan to break the project into manageable parts and seek help where you need it. You schedule short breaks to recharge and maintain momentum.
Outcome: As a result of your preparation and focus, you meet the deadline with a good work product. You note opportunities to refine and improve, taking the work from good to great in the future. Positive feedback from your supervisor further positions you to handle future challenges, each time with more insight gained. Over time, with each experience building on the last, you continue to grow and improve, leading to greater opportunities and achievements.
How to Stop Negative Self Talk
It’s Not That You Lack Skills, You’re Just Not Applying Them Productively.
If you’ve ever exhibited behavior resulting from negative self-talk, you’ve already demonstrated your capacity to think intricately, make a plan, and chase what you want. That is, if what you want is to avoid taking action, making decisions, or changing behavior. You do exert time, skills, and energy–but it’s yielding shitty results.
You have to decide that you want your efforts to serve your life better. Once you are in the practice of recognizing unhelpful thoughts in their tracks, you can begin to shift attention and energy towards solutions. You do this through growing awareness and management skills.
Virtually every human has a critical voice in their heads, but if you passively accept what it says, you neglect your intrinsic motivation, self-esteem, and self-leadership. The most fulfilled humans are not free from negative thoughts. Self-awareness helps them mitigate debilitating self-talk. Self-leadership helps them act intentionally rather than automatically.
