Have a talk with yourself, you'll be surprise how much you can get out of it

Last week, my blog talked about being positive and taking advantage of what we know about the human brain.

Visualizing is playing a future event in our minds before it goes real time and if we do this well, it seems visualizing will enhance the pre-played event turning out successfully on the day.

Naturally, some people are skeptical about visualization. A friend pointed out to me, having read my blog last week that you could visualize yourself winning the race till the cows come home, but it won't make the slightest difference if you’re running the 100 meter race against Usain Bolt. He is right, but what the concept does is help us to be our best; even if that is not being the best.

I remember visualizing every single race I had run in years past, particularly the marathons. It really helped me in the long run (no pun intended). If the race was going according plan then it meant that my visualization was accurate and that gave me confidence.

So often, we know we are capable of a far better performance than what we achieve, be it in sport, work or other aspects of our lives. Lots of things just get in the way and visualizing will help us remove those road blocks.

A subject closely allied to visualizing is self talk, and no, I am not going crazy. Scientists agree the human nervous system cannot tell the difference between an actual experience and one vividly imagined. This means we can make a difference by making sure the inputs into our brains are accurate and appropriate.

We talk to ourselves in words, pictures and emotions at 300 to 400 words a minute. The effects of these conversations are huge in determining our self-image and therefore our beliefs in what we are capable of achieving.

What all of this means is the conversations we have with ourselves about ourselves, experiences we have and the comments we receive from others have a strong influence in determining our future: when the mind talks the body listens and acts accordingly.

So it seems we need to be aware of the messages we are giving ourselves about ourselves, because by doing this well we can change the legacies of past conditioning.

The net effect of passed inputs and current self talk manifests the attitude we have about people, things and circumstances today.

So many of the circumstances we get landed with we cannot change right now, but the choice that no-one can take from us is how we choose to act towards the circumstances. That choice is ours alone.

So much of our attitude can be attributed to the self talk we carry out minute by minute.

Sometimes the self talk is quite accurate, while other times we get fed information that leads us to wrong assumptions and wrong self talk.

For example, if we watch the TV news we will be deluged with all of the things that have gone wrong on the day, here and around the world. After a while it would be easy to put the message into our minds, through self talk, that our country is populated with drunks, child molesters, and crooks running for president.

With the exception of the horrible political ads we are seeing right now, the reality is that the horrible deeds are being performed by less than 1 per cent of people in our country. Unless we remember this, we can easily let self talk say our country is a terrible, violent and unsafe place to live in.

Some see a rose bush full of thorns and others see a thorn bush full of roses. Our attitude towards the thorns and roses will determine our success.