Changing Negative Thoughts About Yourself to Positive Ones
You may be giving yourself negative messages about yourself. Many people do. These are messages that you learned when you were young. You learned from many different sources, including other children, your teachers, family members, caregivers, the media, and even from prejudice and stigma in society.
Once you have learned them, you may have repeated these negative messages over and over to yourself, especially when you were not feeling well or when you were having a hard time. You may have come to believe them. You may have even worsened the problem by making up some negative messages or thoughts of your own. These negative thoughts or messages make you feel bad about yourself and lower your self-esteem.
Some examples of common negative messages that people repeat over and over to themselves include "I am a jerk," "I am a loser," "I never do anything right," or "No one would ever like me." Most people believe these messages, no matter how untrue or unreal they are. They come up immediately in the right circumstance. For instance, if you get a wrong answer, you think, "I am so stupid." They may include words like should, ought, or must. The messages tend to imagine the worst in everything, especially you, and they are hard to turn off or unlearn.
You may think these thoughts or give yourself these negative messages so often that you are hardly aware of them. Pay attention to them. Carry a small pad with you as you go about your daily routine for several days, and jot down negative thoughts about yourself whenever you notice them. Some people say they notice more negative thinking when they are tired, sick, or dealing with a lot of stress. As you become aware of your negative thoughts, you may notice more and more of them.
It helps to take a closer look at your negative thought patterns in order to check out whether or not they are true. You may want a close friend or counselor to help you with this. When you are in a good mood and have a positive attitude about yourself, ask yourself the following questions about each negative thought you have noticed:
- Is this message really true?
- Would a person say this to another person? If not, why am I saying it to myself?
- What do I get out of thinking this thought? If it makes me feel bad about myself, why not stop thinking it?
You could also ask someone else—someone who likes you and whom you trust—if you should believe this thought about yourself. Often, just looking at a thought or situation in a new light helps.
The next step in this process is to develop positive statements you can say to yourself instead; replace these negative thoughts whenever you notice yourself thinking them. You can't think two thoughts at the same time. When you are thinking a positive thought about yourself, you can't be thinking a negative one. In developing these thoughts, use positive words like happy, peaceful, loving, enthusiastic, and warm.
Avoid using negative words such as worried, frightened, upset, tired, bored, not, never, and can't. Don't make a statement like "I am not going to worry anymore." Instead say, "I focus on the positive" or whatever feels right to you. Substitute "it would be nice if…" for "should." Always use the present tense, for example, "I am healthy, I am well, I am happy, I have a good job," as if the condition already exists. Use I, me, or your own name.
You can do this by folding a piece of paper in half the long way to make two columns. In one column, write your negative thought, and in the other column, write a positive thought that contradicts the negative one. You can work on changing your negative thoughts to positive ones by
- Replacing the negative thought with the positive one every time you realize you are thinking the negative thought
- Repeating your positive thought over and over to yourself, out loud whenever you get a chance, and even sharing them with another person if possible
- Writing them over and over
- Making signs that say the positive thought, hanging them in places where you would see them often, like on your refrigerator door or on the mirror in your bathroom, and repeating the thought to yourself several times when you see it
| Negative Thought | Positive Thought |
|---|---|
| I am not worth anything. | I am a valuable person. |
| I have never accomplished anything. | I have accomplished many things. |
| I always make mistakes. | I do many things well. |
| I am a jerk. | I am a great person. |
| I don't deserve a good life. | I deserve to be happy and healthy. |
| I am stupid. | I am smart. |
It helps to reinforce the positive thought if you repeat it over and over to yourself when you are deeply relaxed, like when you are doing a deep breathing or relaxation exercise, or when you are just falling asleep or waking up.
Changing the negative thoughts you have about yourself to positive ones takes time and persistence. If you use these techniques consistently for four to six weeks, you will notice that you don't think these negative thoughts about yourself as much. If they recur at some other time, you can repeat these activities. Don't give up. You deserve to think good thoughts about yourself.
U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). (2020, June). Changing negative thoughts about yourself to positive ones. In Building self-esteem: A self-help guide. Retrieved May 23, 2024, from the Lou Ruspi Jr. Foundation website: https://www.lrjfoundation.com
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