Stop Setting Yourself Up for Failure: Overcoming Negative Self-Talk
Parents, are your teens setting themselves up for failure with their self-talk?
Self-talk, aka your inner voice, is the way you speak and dialogue with yourself. Self-talk shapes your beliefs about who you are, how the world works, and where you fit into it all.
As a certified family life coach, I’ve seen how teens often set up the battle to fight failure poorly through self-talk. The fight for success isn’t just in the classroom or at the dinner table; it’s within the mind.
Teens need to learn to shape the words they speak to themselves so they can grow their confidence, resilience, and courage.
Understanding the Power of Self-Talk
Self-talk can guide our imagination, shape our decisions, and set the tone for our actions.
This constant dialogue in your head can be the difference between reaching your potential and sabotaging it. The choices people make stem from what they think will happen — and what they think will happen stems from what they tell themselves will happen.
Put simply, if you tell yourself that you can achieve a goal, then you are more likely to pursue decisions that help you reach it.
In fact, the words you tell yourself can be more powerful than the words spoken by anyone else. You have the power to influence if you see yourself as someone strong or weak. Bold or shy. Intelligent or foolish.
If your words are consistently negative, they can slowly convince you that you can’t, shouldn’t, or won’t succeed.
Positivity Opens the Door to Success
If you can alter your self-talk from critical to constructive, you open the door to more self-assurance, strength, and success.
Overcoming negative self-talk, though, is difficult. Teens must take on fears, strive to break unhelpful habits, and learn to believe they are capable of great things. Many of the hurdles in life aren’t external; they’re built by our own minds.
Teens need to find their own authentic voice so they can powerfully tell themselves they are resilient and strong. Confident self-talk can enable teens to let go of the need for relentless approval and external validation.
Healthy self-talk isn’t just thinking cheerful thoughts; it’s about pushing yourself to fight against negative words each day. Every teen has the capacity to learn, adjust, and enhance their inner voice.
While your teen learns how to grow their inner voice and shift their mindset, encourage them that any discomfort they feel is a sign of growth.
Tips to Overcome the Negative Words
Through small steps, teens can deliberately move past their struggles and towards growth.
Here are a few tips teens can use on their journey to find a positive inner voice:
- Acknowledge the daily wins. Encourage your teens to regularly identify something they’ve done well and say it along. By speaking it aloud, they reinforce confidence and a growth mindset.
- Tell teens to themselves in the same way they talk to close friends. That love and kindness they give to others should also be given to themselves.
- It’s okay to struggle with focusing on the negative. It’s normal for our brains to like to dwell on what’s going wrong. Just remember, you can push past negativity and instead prioritize hope.
- Don’t let teens view themselves through their failures. Your teens aren’t defined by their challenges, because these are just a part of their overall journey. Failures are merely steps of growth.
Creating new thought habits isn’t about perfection, but about perseverance. Through daily actions, teens can find the path to success.
