3 Simple Ways To Communicate With Yourself- (For Real Success)

How we communicate with others has a tangiable impact on our life, but how we communicate with ourselves determines our life. Essentially, the way we communicate with "our individual self" either motivates us to build the life we want or discourages us into settling for what we don't want or desire.

Do you know how you communicate with yourself? ( I want you to pause and take a moment to reflect.) Notice what voices run through your mind.

Is it your voice or the voice of a parent, a friend, a teacher, a colleague that dominates your thoughts?

Are the voices inside your head ( your thoughts, the beliefs and ideas you have flowing in your mind), encouraging you to take the steps you want or paralyzing you with fear and anxiety. The fact is that the one person communicating with us every single moment of our lives is well you, yourself. Which is why it's important to make sure the way you communicate personally sets you up for success and growth instead of stagnation and failure.

The way we communicate with ourselves often trickles down to the way we communicate with others- without even realizing.

The thoughts that flow inside our head is how we communicate with ourselves, if these thoughts are predominately negative, you begin demotivating yourself. This means that despite wanting to do something that's right for you or you truly want, you are unable to. For example, at work you want to ask for a raise or simply want to shift your responsibilities to another area of work, if the thoughts in your head are telling you that you don't deserve it or the organization is not ready for it, you will never put yourself forward even though you want to. By actually not speaking up, you are communicating to yourself that you are not worth it and because your actions and desires do not match, without knowing it you begin to feel like a loser.( it's a vicious cycle that continues self-doubt and inaction in many people).

Master communicators are not just good speakers or writers, they are excellent listeners of not only other people but also the thoughts inside their own heads.

Most people have the tendency to communicate in either a very harsh tone or an over-indulgent tone with themselves, which ultimately does not serve their interests. I have led coaching sessions and created personal branding strategies for a diverse group of people, ranging from the fresh graduate all the way to CEOs and Heads of departments, and the common thread amongst all were, they were communicating with themselves in a way that was completely shattering their self-esteem. An under confident person no matter how intelligent, and capable can not communicate effectively and will always struggle to reach their goals. There's a popular saying that "nobody knows you better than you know yourself" and sadly this is not true. I have realized in my decade long career that unfortunately many people don't know who they are which is why they continue to communicate ineffectively with themselves and others. Majority of us are simply not self-aware, as I have previously highlighted in this newsletter, while we can not control how others perceive us, we can absolutely be more conscious of our thoughts and behavior and become better at communicating what we actually mean.

Here are three small steps you can incorporate in your life to become an effective self communicator.

1. Listen to yourself :The first step is to get listening to yourself, figure out what the thoughts running mindlessly in your day are all about. A simple and effective way is to begin journaling, taking ten minutes to write out how you are feeling or how your day went. Give it a week and go back and review your journal entries, you'll soon realize what your focus is on, what is bothering you and how you feel about yourself. Then you can assess how to motivate yourself best, do you need to speak with yourself with more compassion or you need to encourage your self in a tone that's more urgent and maybe add some discipline in your life. By learning to listen to yourself without judgement you will learn how to communicate with yourself in a way that motivates you and this step is crucial for success.
2. Give yourself incentive: Successful people are people who are able to motivate themselves, they take the right actions without being pushed/pulled by others in every direction. This means that even when they don't get the approval/support of others, they continue to take actions that are for their good in the long run. Giving yourself incentives is basically the reward system you set up for yourself because we often have to take steps that don't yield immediate results, small incentives can ease the process. For instance, an incentive can be eating your favorite meal after creating a weekly work plan for yourself. This meal will communicate to yourself that you are worthy of both finishing your work and enjoying a reward afterwards. If there's no incentive most likely you won't do it or keep delaying it. Another example, think about how good it feels after doing something that you know is good for you but something you may struggle with. That feeling too can be an incentive. By following step 1, you will know what incentives to set up for yourself, so you actually implement them.
3. Take small actions : Communicating effectively with yourself does not mean saying positive things to yourself or thinking positive thoughts, it also means taking small but effective steps in the direction you want to go. Let me break it down: Let's say you want to lose weight, you are not going to do that by sitting at your office desk, dreaming of a new body. You will need to take several small steps that will add to your goal of losing the weight. For example, booking a session with a trainer and continuing that for a few months or watching what you eat. Take the small step, instead of rushing to go to the gym 5 days a week, go twice a week until it becomes a habit and then amp it up. Small steps are more powerful than large steps, they take less effort, less time and are more repeatable( thus building consistency). Didn't I tell you that you are going to become a master communicator by embracing this newsletter? We are not going to settle and become just good communicators . A master looks into the nitty gritty of the skillset that they want mastery over. That means diving deep, slowly and consistently, from learning to communicate with others to one self- if you want to become a magnetic, powerful communicator you have to master it or at the minimum make a genuine attempt towards mastery. If you are sick of feeling unseen at work or in life general and want to boost your communication skills to to build a confident personal brand, email me at mariaesperenza@yahoo.com alternatively you can message me on LinkedIn to book your coaching sessions and learn more about the courses and services I'm offering. By working with me you will not only increase your visibility on/offline you will also learn to communicate the value that you bring both as a person and a professional.Till the next edition. XoXo,Maria

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