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Mental Apartments and Self-Talk
8-09-2017
Being able to share our thinking using language is a hallmark of being human. Our ability to speak to others about personal thoughts and feelings, and to listen to theirs, builds social cohesion enabling civilizations to develop. Our voice is a manifestation of who we are: what we stand for and how we want to be treated. But using our voice to speak aloud to others makes up only a fraction of the actual time we spend talking. Much of our talk is directed inwards. Whether we want to admit it or not, we talk to ourselves. Being human means having a very noisy inner conversationalist who chatters nearly unceasingly and seemingly unbidden, consciously and subconsciously, in the privacy of our minds. Unfortunately, for many of us, our inner voice is an expert critic discouraging, dissuading, and dismissive, harping on our flaws and foibles, bogging us down and blocking our path – a negative nuisance.
Behavioural researcher Dr. Shad Helmstetter encourages us to put our inner voice to good use. In his book, “What to Say When You Talk to Your Self” he shows how we can reprogram our self-talk so that our constant companion serves to uplift and encourage us to live a life filled with the vitality of achievement and the peace of fulfillment.
Helmstetter asks us to “image a “mental apartment” – the place where you live with your thoughts. It’s furnished with everything you think about yourself – good and bad – and because this mental apartment has been with us a while, it is usually filled with hand-me-down furniture. It is the old negative way of thinking that was handed down from our parents, our teachers, our friends, and anyone else who has helped us with the programming of our subconscious mind.”
This hand-me-down furniture is embarrassing. You’re tired of living with it. In a burst of resolve, you decide to clean house. Determinedly, you push everything that is broken, worn out, not your style, or plain ugly to the curb with a “free” sign hoping that someone will take it away. Your mental apartment is now spotless. You’ve gotten rid of all the negative things cluttering your mind. Good riddance!
As you look around your clean, but empty, apartment you notice how tired you are. But there’s nothing to sit on. Slyly, you sneak outside and bring back in a chair. Just one, just something to make you feel a little more comfortable. As you relax you realize you have no bed to sleep in or table to eat from. Out you go to retrieve what you discarded. Bit by bit, your mental apartment is filled up again with all your old thoughts. Helmstetter explains, “We are most comfortable with the thoughts we have lived with the most. It makes no difference if those thoughts aren’t the best for us – it’s what we know, it’s what we’re most secure with.”
He continues, “When you decide to stop thinking negatively and increase your confidence, and do not have an immediate, new positive vocabulary to replace the old, you will always return to what is comfortable, that old mental apartment of furniture and old negative self-talk of the past.”
Now imagine, as you are lugging all your old thoughts to the curb, a generous benefactor pulls up with a truckload of shiny new furniture, in the exact style and colour you dream about. This time, as you throw out a hunk of junk, you bring in a beautiful replacement piece. You slow down and take stock of all your thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs. You assess and examine - keeping the treasures and tossing the trash. You are purposeful in deciding what no longer is useful, what you want to hold on to, and what new items you want to allow into your private sanctuary.
At the end of the day, the mysterious patron drives away in a truck filled with useless debris and you sit in your mental apartment appreciating the beauty of your new belongings and your cherished old treasures. As Helmstetter says, “What was once filled with tattered hopes and broken-down dreams is now filled with the bright new beginnings of an exciting new you. The new mental furniture and new sense of confidence, through your new self-talk, stands on the sturdy legs of self-assurance; you have replaced frustration and quiet resignation with the contagious confidence of promise and belief.”
Now that Helmstetter has explained the furniture choices of our “mental apartment,” in our next column we’ll learn how to replace any tattered old negative thinking with lovingly crafted self-talk of the finest quality.
Zainab Dhanani can be reached at z_dhanani@yahoo.ca
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