Page 32 - How to play life to your advantage -print

Having been a victim of domestic violence myself I know the power of words

intimately. I have come to realise through my own life experience over years and years

and years of being told horrible words about myself on a daily basis from someone

else who I loved dearly how words can really damage your self-perception, your self-

worth and your self-confidence.

The problem is when we keep hearing abusive messages again and again and again,

we start to internalize those messages and identify with them. We start to take them

on and believe the messages and tell ourselves that that is who we are.

In the same way, we can use the power of self-talk and commit to healthy self-talk

through daily practice in order to empower ourselves.

What is even more interesting from this study that Dr Daniel Amen did is that through

the power of self-talk we can actually start to self-regulate our emotional experiences.

A powerful exercise that Dr Amen suggests doing is as follows: when you get

emotionally triggered and you start having an emotional experience that is

uncomfortable or feels out of your control you need to acknowledge that you're being

emotional. Once you acknowledge the emotion, you then need to remove yourself

from the situation and write down exactly what it is you're thinking. You need to

actually write down the words that you are telling yourself in that moment or the

words that you told yourself in your head that led you to have that emotional

experience.

31