That voice inside your head has a huge impact on who you are and how you live your life. You may not think so, but with practice you can change your self-talk. Why wouldn’t anyone want to develop a habit of positive self-talk? It uplifts you; it helps increase your confidence, it enables you to attract what your heart desires, it allows you to adopt a healthier lifestyle and it helps reduce stress.

However, it can easily slip your mind to regularly practice positive self-talk if you don’t make it a habit. And yes, it might sound and feel ridiculous at first, but if you keep going with your positive self-talk it will become natural to you. To help you stay on track, you may like to put some post-it notes wherever you'll see them: on the bathroom mirror, on your computer screen, inside of your wallet, in your car — wherever works for you. It’s important to constantly remind yourself to speak kindly to yourself until it becomes a habit.

Bring your awareness to your self-talk when you wake up, when you’re driving to work, waiting to be served at a restaurant, exercising, or lying down; use it every day, in all situations.

When clients first come to me, this what they tell themselves day in and day out:

"I don't want to feel overwhelmed. I don't want to feel full of anxiety and stress. I don't want to be rushed every minute of every day. I don't want my house to be full of chaos and unhappiness. I don't want my mind being consumed with negative thoughts and my body being filled with physical tension. I don't want to feel so tired and exhausted. I don't want to feel like I live in a whirlwind. I don't want to feel 'less' than. I don't want to just exist from day to day."

I immediately become clear on what they don't want, so I shift their focus on what they do want by using mantras during difficult moments. After all, what we focus on expands, and what we send out will always return to us.

I then suggest that they change their self-talk to something like: