Inner Dialog– What Are You Telling Yourself?

Dialog can be conversations between people, or what you tell yourself.  You
may watch what you say to others, but do you control what you tell yourself?  What you say to yourself can be more important that what you say to someone else.

One example that came to my mind when I was thinking about this was Gollum, from the Lord of the Rings.  He talked to himself all the time.  ("Yes, my precious.")  There was one scene in the movie where the good and bad Gollum were having an argument, and the good Gollum told the bad Gollum to go away and never come back.  And it worked, for a while anyway.  We had a good helpful Gollum for a while. 

We have an inner dialog everyday with ourselves. Your own voice is talking to yourself all day long.  However, like Gollum, you can control what you are telling yourself, and what you believe in.

Do you spend your day tearing yourself up, calling yourself stupid, or you can't do this or that?  Or are you focusing on the good things going right, looking for those moments that you can treasure?

Remember this....

Remember Apollo Ono?  He is an Olympic Champion from two winter games. He won a lot of medals.  He has a poem he recites to himself.

"Today
It’s time.
Heart of a lion.
I will give my ALL.
Heart, mind and spirit
Together.
This is what it’s all about.
All the way to the end.
Today I will stand tall.
No regrets."


Several years ago I watched the movie HOOK with my kids.  Peter Pan was all grown up and had kids.  Captain Hook had captured them and taken them back to Neverland.  Peter Pan went back to get his kids, but he had forgotten how to be a child, and he could no longer fly.  The secret to flying was to find your happy thought.  He worked at it, but years of being a business man and dealing with things, all happy thoughts had fled his mind.

I find myself in the same situation today.  I can really relate to Peter Pan's inability to find a happy thought with all the stress my life is currently dishing out.  Yet, if I take time to tell myself that things are good, life is good, I have a great wife, beautiful children and a fantastic grandson, the day seems to go better.  Yet if I focus on the bad things, I find by the end of the day I am miserable. 

So like Pan, I look for my happy thoughts, with those thoughts the day goes by so much better.  I accomplish more.  And most important, I find I am happier.

Personal productivity is higher if you are happy.  Life seems better if you are happy.  A lot of times happiness comes from within, not from having stuff, or doing things.

Once Peter Pan found his happy thoughts and could fly, he became the powerful person he had once been, and of course went on to defeat Captain Hook.  I mean it is Peter Pan, of course!

One thing to try to give yourself a good inner dialog is to recharge yourself.  Imagine a pitcher of water and a lot of cups.  You are the jug, and you have to give of yourself all day long.  So pour the water into cups.  Each time you need to do something, you give a bit of water to a cup.  At some point there is no more water in you container.  You have nothing left to give, you've given everything away!

You need to take time to refill your pitcher.  That means doing something you enjoy for yourself.  One of my writing friends said this, "I pass up the darker vices in favor of chocolate and looks for any excuse to reward myself."

So, what do you tell yourself to keep going?  What are your happy thought?  If you don't have any of this going on in your life right now, what can you do to change it?

I know my life is better when I focus on the positives in my life.