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Is your self-talk naughty or nice?

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Why Self-Talk Matters to Communication

 

Your self-talk matters. It influences the words coming out of your mouth, how you feel about yourself and the decisions you make. And what better time of the year to become aware of how helpful or harmful your self-talk is.

Over the next couple of weeks, many of us will be busy shopping for gifts, attending parties and holiday dinners, reflecting on the year that was and making plans for the year that’s ahead. Through it all, self-talk will be blabbering up a storm! The busier and more stressed we become, the more it chatters.

Self-talk is tied to our belief system

What we believe about ourselves is reflected in the content and tone of our self-talk. If you believe you’re great under pressure, your self-talk will cheer you on from the sidelines as you navigate the shopping mall filled with last-minute holiday shoppers. You’ll feel motivated and focused and you’ll accomplish what you set out to do. If you believe the opposite, your self-talk will berate you for procrastinating and you’ll move from store to store frustrated by the crowds and the seeming lack of good gift selection.

You take whatever emotions your self-talk evokes into the rest of your day and it will influence how you show up. Now think about this from the standpoint of your business or your job, your relationship or your health.

Self-talk can be retrained

It takes awareness, a desire to change our beliefs about ourselves and intentional action to shift our self-talk from naughty to nice. Here’s an exercise I share with clients to help them become aware of the nature of their self-talk specifically for the context of end-of-year reflection and next-year planning. As you reflect on what you’ve accomplished this year, listen for whether your self-talk celebrates or plays down your achievements. As you plan for the year ahead, what does your self-talk say about your goals as you write them down? If your self-talk is nice – great! Amplify it and let it cheer you on. If it’s naughty, that’s OK. You now know it’s time to make a change.

Authentic and powerful communication starts with self-talk

What you’re saying inside is being communicated on the outside even if the words you speak are not the same. I’ll say it differently: If the words you speak are not in alignment with how you feel about and perceive yourself, communication misses its mark. There will be no accompanying integrity or trust.

When we use an inside-out approach to communication, there is no doubt about who we are and what we stand for. The alignment of our beliefs with our self-talk and the words we speak results in ease, authentic connection and power. Imagine what you could do with that!

As we end the year, I encourage you to spend some time listening to you talk to yourself. Yes, I know how that sounds. BUT it could make all the difference in how you show up in 2019. And if you find you need a little help, that’s what I’m here for.

Happy Holidays and warm wishes for a prosperous, joyful and healthy new year!

Communication: What’s it all about?

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Pop quiz. Did you know there are two outputs to communication?

If you guessed there’s a verbal output (the words we use) and a non-verbal output (what we do with our voice and body) ding, ding, ding, you’ve won yourself the opportunity to read the rest of this post! Ha.

All jokes aside, there are serious considerations to communication you’re overlooking that may be responsible for lacklustre results.

Percentages, percentages

If we were to put numbers to words, there are various studies that aim to quantify just how much of communication is attributed to the verbal versus the non-verbal. At its highest value, the non-verbal output of communication has been cited at 93% of communication. Some studies divide this number further to 55% body language and 38% voice. In either case, this leaves just seven percent for the verbal output of communication.

A word of caution – there are debates over the actual percentages of verbal versus non-verbal communication and whether we can even attribute numbers to them, since context is a huge part of any communication setting. What we want to recognize as our key takeaway is that non-verbal communication accounts for far more of communication than we give it credit for. And I’m going to guess, if you’re like most people, you spend most of your time preparing the verbal.

You don’t know what you don’t know

At this point in the history of humankind, our access to words is at the best it could ever be. Thank you smartphones and dictionary.com! When we’re not getting our point across or connecting with people the way we’d like, it’s not as simple to just say it’s because we used the wrong words. It’s what we’re not consciously accessing that’s causing us to miss our mark. Because it’s not conscious, we’re not even sure of what we’re supposed to be accessing to become the type of confident, articulate communicator we want to be.

Enter A Model for Conscious Communication. There’s a whole system of background inputs – operating unconsciously – that’s feeding our verbal and non-verbal communication. There are five inputs to this system and each one helps to make up our own unique communication blueprint.

Yes, you have a unique communication blueprint

There are reasons why replicating “guaranteed success” communication formulas from experts often ends in frustration and failure. It’s not because you’re not doing it right. What works for them isn’t necessarily going to work for you, because your blueprint is different from theirs. As we explore each input to A Model for Conscious Communication, you’ll see how uniquely you interact with the input and why you’re getting the results you are, and most importantly, how you can shift your results in your favour.

In my next post, we’ll cover the first input feeding communication. I guarantee you, it’s going to give you all the feels… By the way, that was a hint. 😉