Journaling Exercise - Reverse Negative Self Talk and Stand in Your Own Power

The first step to changing negative self talk is to get familiar with some of your identity perceptions. What we deep down really think of ourselves shapes our reality. Learning to love, accept and celebrate all of who you are is key to living a full and meaningful life.

As a recovering people pleaser, I have found that exercises like this help me to stay grounded in what I want and not get pulled into someone else's energy. By shining light onto those areas of negative self worth - they start to lose their power. Regular attention to this will eventually allow you to replace those feelings of inadequacy and stand in your own power.

To be honest, I worry that caring about what others think will always be an issue for me, no matter how much I work at it. I have found exercises like this help me, and I hope that you find it helpful as well.

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Part 1

• Find a comfortable safe place and a time that makes you feel little pressure to do other tasks
• List as many uncensored "I Am" statements as possible
• Include both negative and positive statements
• Examples: I am easily angered, I am anxious, I am detail oriented, I am strong, I am too much, I am a matryr, I am socially awkward, I am a good public speaker, I am a loving husband
• Rely on your own ideas of who you are instead of others descriptions of you
• Don't think too hard about what you write and don't worry about wording things perfectly. Make it RAW and a little rough around the edges
  
  

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Part 2

Use another sheet in your journal to create two columns

• First Column: Aspects of Myself I easily accept
• Second Column: Aspects of Myself I Resist and Hope to Change
• Go back to original "I Am" list and categorize the I am statements into those two columns
• Without judgement, notice the percentage of I am statements you accept versus the amount you resist
• Resistance to our own self definitions sets up an internal state of conflict - Stress!

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By becoming aware our internal dialogue about our self worth - we can spend more energy on reducing our internal conflicts and learning to accept ourselves more wholly. I try to repeat this exercise a few times a year to stay tuned in with myself. Sometimes, it really surprises me how much the items on my list have changed. I would recommend hanging on to your list every time you do this exercise, because it can be really useful to see how far you've come. I am often pleasantly surprised to see how some of the items that I was struggling with a few months ago are no longer on my list.

I want to thank and credit my lovely meditation guide and mindfulness teacher - Elizabeth Deboo. She is a Reiki master and mindfulness coach in my home town of Bellingham, WA.

I hope you found this helpful. Love and peace to you.