How Negative Self-Talk Can Ruin Your Business Tuning into a gloomy inner voice? One entrepreneur shares how silencing negative self-chatter helped him turn failures into successes.
By Aytekin Tank
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
George Mumford knows the secret to helping NBA athletes to play their best. He's worked with scores of all-stars, including Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, and the late Kobe Bryant. His secret? Mumford told ABC News that a key part of his job is changing their inner dialogue from negative to positive. Why?
Because that little voice in your head not only affects how you feel, it directly impacts your performance. For professional athletes, getting negative self-talk under wraps can lead to a championship victory (or in Jordan's case, six championship victories). For entrepreneurs, cultivating positive thinking can directly impact your bottom line.
As CEO of my company Jotform, the past couple of years have been exceptionally challenging. But during these difficult times, I believe that positive thinking is more critical than ever. Luckily, it's possible to control the narrative in our heads—not necessarily to stop it, but to reign it in when it becomes too pessimistic.
But first, a closer look at what entrepreneurs stand to gain from positive self-talk.
Related: Ask Yourself This Simple Question to Leave Negativity Behind
Why self-talk matters for entrepreneurs
Studies show that negative self-talk can cause a host of health problems, including stress and depression. It also affects your physical well-being. Dr. Richard Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that negative thinking stimulates inflammatory mechanisms that lead to chronic illness and accelerated aging.
As if that's not reason enough to nip negative thinking in the bud, it could be damaging your ability to run your business by interfering with productivity and motivation.
Elizabeth Scott, PhD, writes that "Focusing on negative thoughts may lead to decreased motivation as well as greater feelings of helplessness and depression. Negative self-talk can lead to a lowered ability to see opportunities, as well as a decreased tendency to capitalize on these opportunities."
It's worth figuring out how to take control of that negative inner voice, rather than it controlling you. Here, a few expert-backed strategies for doing it.
Strategies for controlling your internal monologue
1. Learn to identify it
"Ugh, what a bonehead!" you say to yourself, after asking what you thought was a silly question at a meeting. Sometimes, our negative self-talk is obvious. But oftentimes, we engage in it without even realizing it—telling ourselves that we always do something, or exaggerating the importance of a minor mistake.
According to The Harvard University Stress and Development Lab, the first step in defeating negative self talk is identifying it when it happens. That's why they spell out ten different types of negative self talk, including "all or nothing" thinking, jumping to conclusions (for example, my college must think I'm incompetent), catastrophizing, and overgeneralization—seeing a single event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
Awareness can help you identify common triggers for your negative thinking and figure out how to redirect the narrative.
2. Reappraise the situation
Once you identify a negative inner dialogue, the next step is to reappraise the situation. According to the Harvard's Stress and Development Lab, two effective methods for doing that are positive reframing and examining the evidence.
Positive reframing means thinking about a perceived negative situation in a more positive light—even something so simple as finding a positive takeaway, aka, seeing the silver lining. To cite a Jotform example, a few years ago, when we released a new version of our online forms, customer feedback was initially lukewarm. Many users weren't happy with the update. But instead of viewing it as a total fail, our team used the experience as an opportunity to listen harder and learn more about how our customers wanted to use our product. As it turned out, they didn't want the old version as much as they wanted the choice of which to use. Positive reframing helped us to make use of an initial misstep before jumping to the worst possible conclusion—that it was a complete failure.
The second method, examining the evidence, means pausing to weigh all of the evidence that led to our initial negative assessment. Ask yourself: is it really true that [insert your negative thinking]? Then, consider all of the available information and other possible interpretations.
3. Practice self-compassion
This strategy is seemingly the most simple but for many of us, the most challenging—treating yourself with compassion. As reported by the New York Times, studies show that self-compassion boosts motivation, personal improvement and positive adjustment in the face of regrets.
The reality of being an entrepreneur is that you fail often. The only way to learn from that failure, rather than letting it paralyze you with regret and doubts, is through self-compassion. Says Dr. Kristin Neff, associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. "Research shows that the No. 1 barrier to self-compassion is fear of being complacent and losing your edge. And all the research shows that's not true. It's just the opposite." Self-compassion is actually linked to greater achievement.
Related: 5 Ways to Rekindle Your Optimism After You Crash and Burn
You're probably wondering: how do I start treating myself kinder?
It begins with committing to self-compassion. As George Mumford tells his players, "don't be hatin'"—commit to stop hatin' on yourself and instead try a new approach. The experts at Headspace recommend acknowledging negative thoughts without judgment, and then letting them go. Or, try positive affirmations—countering a negative thought directly with something positive. For example, if the inner critic says, "The new product failed, you're a failure," the counter-critic says, "The team worked hard on this project and really showed up for each other." Elizabeth Scott calls it cross-examining your inner critic. She writes, "The vast majority of negative self-talk is an exaggeration, and calling yourself on this can help to take away its damaging influence."
Try speaking to yourself as you would speak to a good friend and the self-compassion will come easily.
4. Make positive self-talk instructional
Numerous studies show that positive self-talk improves performance. But one team of researchers dug deeper and found that instructional self-talk is even more effective—that is, instead of a blanket motivational statement, give yourself technical instruction on how to perform better. The researchers conclude that we should carefully design the self-talk according to our needs.
This strategy may not apply in every situation, but it's worth considering where there are specific techniques that will help you perform better. Some experts even recommend practicing the instructional self-talk ahead of time so that it's readily accessible when you need it the most.
Related: Self-Compassion Is an Essential Tool for all Entrepreneurs
Final thoughts
When you find yourself tuning into negative inner chatter, remember that it's human—we all engage in that kind of negative thinking sometimes. Then, give yourself the kind of meaningful compassionate advice that you'd offer a good friend.
