Speaking highly of yourself: 3 practical methods

Hey Bloomers! 💛🌼 In the last blog post, there was a discussion about speaking highly of yourself, and as promised, this one will provide practical methods for you to begin doing so. When approaching anything new in life, it is always helpful to have a starting point. Approach this blog post as just that, a starting point for you to start speaking highly of yourself. Because these are practical methods, challenge yourself to start at least one of these things immediately, and track your progress. 

A recap

If you were asked to list the last 10 kind or empowering things you said to yourself, would you be able to fill up that list? You need to reach a place where you effortlessly speak highly of yourself, as this has the potential to enormously improve the quality of your life. When you speak highly of yourself, you eliminate some negative emotions and thoughts that hinder your happiness. These are replaced by more favourable ones as you’re able to see the good in yourself.

Additionally, you will be able to achieve more. This is because the words we speak have a direct impact on how our lives progress. You have the power to speak things into existence. So, for instance, when you speak hard work into your life instead of reinforcing negative traits like you “just never seem to get anything done”, that will become your reality.

Lastly, and certainly not least, speaking highly of yourself ensures that you will not allow anyone to lower your self-esteem, as you will be aware of your worth. 

Having established the value in speaking highly of yourself, we can now look at three practical methods for doing so. These are self-affirmations, progress journaling, and the best one of all, consciously doing good. 

Three practical methods for speaking highly of yourself

1. Self-affirmations 

Positive Psychology defines self-affirmations as “positive phrases or statements used to challenge negative or unhelpful thoughts”. Self-affirmations have been a rather controversial topic of discussion. After all, how can things change in your life just because you said so? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. You can’t just change things in your life through words. Everything needs to be backed up by actions. However, affirming is a first and extremely helpful step. You can decide right this very second to start speaking highly of yourself and begin seeing it manifesting in your life. Can you really say “I am successful” and start witnessing success in your life? With accompanied work, yes! It’s scientifically backed! 

The science behind self-affirmations

The science behind affirmations will be discussed through an article by “This Space” titled “The Science Behind Positive Affirmations”. To understand how it works you have to know one thing about our brains: they are innately lazy. The brain’s purpose is to keep you alive, and therefore, it has evolved to make quick decisions about urgently important things such as food and safety, and not to be analytical. 

That is why there are things such as the observational selection bias, which is a tendency to notice more of something once it has been initially noticed. For example, if you decide to buy a BMW and look at pictures of your future BMW on Pinterest, you will suddenly see BMWs everywhere on the road. 

Having understood how our brains work, it becomes easier to understand how self-affirmations work. They take these cognitive biases and use them for our own benefit. If you keep on repeating positive self-affirmations to yourself, your brain begins the process of looking for signs that will make these affirmations true. This will go to your conscious brain and suddenly you notice things that will help you to achieve what it is that you want. For more information, you can read the article by This Space HERE. 

Practical example

Let me offer a practical example. If you repeat the phrase “I am successful” to yourself multiple times, your brain will start looking for cues that make this information true. Suddenly you’re noticing things you might have dismissed before. You got 80% in that minor tutorial or someone asked you for help with something? Hmmm, maybe you are smart. By the time the big exam comes, you’ll have the confidence to study hard and perform well, because your brain believes that you are smart.

So, self-affirmations are a wonderful way to start speaking highly of yourself. You just have to describe yourself the way you want to be! (And back it up with the actions of course). And these won’t just be empty words – they will be fruitful seeds that will allow you to grow into the person you have always wanted to be. 

2. Progress Journaling

If you have been a part of this blog for a while, you know that we are obsessed with journaling and all of its benefits over here! This is yet another benefit of journaling: you are able to physically and dramatically see the way that you’re progressing in different areas of your life. I have decided to call this “progress journaling”, but it is not a special type of journalling different to what you have already been doing. If you have been journaling normally, you’re already progress journaling! And I will explain how next. But if you have not started journaling yet, please read some of the articles on this blog about journaling to start this amazing journey. You can find them HERE, HERE, and HERE.  

Through ordinary journaling, you are able to see the progress that you are making in multiple areas of your life. You might have made a random journal entry six months ago detailing a negative experience you had with someone whose values differed fundamentally from yours. And now, you’re making an entry describing how you were able to listen to other people’s views and values that are contradictory to yours, and were not in the slightest affected by it. Looking at the two entries, you will be able to see the progress that you made in your interactions with people in the last six months.

Another example

Another example could be a journal entry you made a few months back detailing how difficult it has been applying for jobs. And now you are making a journal entry about how your day at work was. And simply through that, you are able to see your resilience. It makes it easier for you to speak highly of yourself because you can see the results right in front of you. You can say “I AM RESILIENT” with full confidence. 

It’s difficult to speak highly of yourself when you don’t think there’s anything productive that you’re doing, or any progress whatsoever that you’re making. try not to get swept away by the busyness of life and fail to comprehend the successes that you have achieved. It’s important to take time to reflect on the wins, even the little ones! You will be forced to speak highly of yourself when you can see the brilliant things you have done right in front of your eyes. 

3. Show up as the person you want to become

“I am helpful. Giving. Accommodating. Sincere”. 

“I am hardworking. Focused. Caring. Capable”. 

The first set of adjectives are how a person would describe themselves in relation to other people. The second set of adjectives are about a person’s relationship with them self. What they have in common however, is the following: YOU ARE WHAT YOU CONSISTENTLY DO. 

One easy way to get in the habit of speaking highly of yourself is by doing things that are WORTHY of you speaking highly of yourself. That way, you will have no option but to acknowledge the good that you are doing. You are what you consistently do. If you consistently give, you are a giver. If you consistently help others, you are helpful. And if you consistently take care of yourself, you are caring. By consistently doing something, you become that something. Therefore, make an effort to ensure that you are consistently doing good. That way, you will effortlessly speak highly of yourself. 

Take caution ⚠️

There are however two important things to remember. Firstly, some people may be uncomfortable with speaking highly of themselves as they may equate this with bragging. However, the two are completely different! Merriam-Webster defines bragging as “arrogant talk or manner”. Speaking highly of yourself has nothing to do with arrogance. Instead, it is about seeing the value in yourself and appreciating that. There is nothing beneficial about talking down on yourself. You have beautiful characterises for a reason – embrace them. 

Secondly, some of the things that allow you to speak highly of yourself are future focused. For instance, in the realm of self-affirmations, you may be affirming a quality that is not yet a reality in your life. During all this, remember to appreciate the you that is here now. Although the person you are today may have some work to do to become better, they are still a wonderful person. The trick is to love yourself so much that you want to do better, instead of forcing yourself to do better from a place of hatred. 

Sending you lots of love and light, Bloomers 💛🔆🌼

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