Self Talk + (pos) VERSUS – (neg)

1. Self Talk+ (pos)VERSUS– (neg) Self Talk and the Impact

2. Objective: • To identify the effects of negative and positive self-talk. • To identify how - self-talk sets one up to fail. • To understand how to change negative self-talk to positive.

3. Self Talk – warm up • Write five things you are not good in at school, work, exercise, eating, etc. Phrase them as: • I can’t…. • I am bad at…. • I am unable to …. • I don’t know how…..

4. Self Talk and the Impact • Every human being thinks or silently says things to themselves constantly. This continual dialogue with yourself is called self-talk. Researchers who study self-talk estimate that we send ourselves approximately 50,000 messages on an average day. • Doesn’t that mean that we exert more influence on ourselves than anybody else does? • Who else do we get that many messages from every day? • It’s not only the number of messages we get that influences us, it’s also the credibility. • You may question what others tell you, but you trust yourself, don’t you? • Self-talk is very powerful because you believe it. Even when it’s not true, self-talk has tremendous credibility.

5. Self Talk – Main Activity • Read the following lines. • I am just a messy person. • I am no good at basketball. • I am always late. • I am not very smart.

6. Negative Self Talk - 1 • Remember the arm activity where the student had to say “I am weak” while another pushed down on their arms. If you say to yourselves ’Economics is too hard for me’, then when you sit down to do the work you will have a lower energy level, and consequently won’t do as well as you could. That’s one way negative self-talk sets you up to fail.

7. Negative Self Talk - 2 • There is a second way that negative self-talk sets you up to fail. Let’s take the Economics example. • If your self-talk is “Economics is too hard for me’, then how are you going to feel, what kind of attitude will you develop about doing Economics? • If that’s your attitude and feeling, what actions will you take in Economics? • If those are the actions you do and the behaviors you display, how will you end up in Economics?

8. Negative Self Talk - 2 • It’s characteristic of humans to reason from the particular to the general. That’s called generalization. It means to assume that what you know about a specific instance applies to everything else like it. However that’s NOT always the case. Generalizations are particularly questionable in the area of human behavior. Behaviors are not either/or. The truth is that all behavior is somewhere along a continuum. • Good at Economics x Bad at Economics

9. Positive Self Talk • To change negative self-talk one must: • Recognize the continuum. • Figure out where you are on it at the moment. • Figure out where you want to be. • Replace negative self-talk with positive as if they were already true.

10. Positive Self Talk • Go back draw a continuum for each of your five statements with Good at …. at one end and Bad at ….at the other end. Place an x where you HONESTLY think you are on the continuum. Place a 0 where you would like to be. Rewrite those five statements using positive statements as if they were already true. Write below them 2 actions you can take to make your x go to your 0. Share them with your group

11. Example: • I am bad at Tennis. Good at ___0_____________X__Bad at • I am good at Tennis. • I will practice my over hand serve successfully 25 times each day. • I will work on my speed, agility and quickness for 30 minutes Mon, Wed, and Fri.