Author: Elizabeth Odders-White, PhD
We all know how challenging life in academia can be, and it seems to get harder every year. The intense and varied demands lead to constant juggling, which can leave us feeling that we’re not doing anything well. Unhelpful stories like this further escalate our stress, setting off a vicious cycle.
The good news is that shifting our self-talk can have a big positive impact on our experience, reducing our stress and improving our quality of life.
In my upcoming NCFDD webinar, I will lead us through a 3-step process for harnessing our self-talk for good rather than evil. While I can’t promise that we’ll be stress-free by the end, I can say unequivocally that these tools have changed my life for the better.
You probably have a good sense of what I mean by self-talk, but just to be explicit, I’m thinking of the voice (or voices) inside our head providing running commentary on everything we encounter. For many of us, the tone of this inner dialogue can be disturbingly harsh, especially when we’re under pressure. It doesn’t help that, as academics, we’re trained to dissect things and identify gaps and shortcomings. It’s all too easy to turn that critical eye on ourselves, further fueling our stress.
Like any process of growth and change, the first step in shifting our self-talk is building our awareness of it. You may already be keenly, and possibly painfully, aware of the thousands of thoughts that bounce around your head each day. In fact, you might identify so strongly with that inner voice that you can’t distinguish it from your own. Or perhaps you’re at the other end of the spectrum and aren’t consciously aware of your self-talk. Whatever your past experience, we begin this process by working to notice our internal dialogue without judging it.
The second step is getting curious and creative. Here, we start to separate our self-talk from our sense of self, recognizing that we are not the voice in our head, and we can choose how to engage with our thoughts. The most important idea—not only from this step but from the entire process of improving our self-talk—is that we needn’t believe everything we think. By approaching our inner commentary with playful curiosity and creativity, we begin to loosen the grip of unhelpful limiting beliefs.
The third and final step involves flipping the script. We practice upgrading our self-talk using a variety of simple yet powerful tools, laying the foundation for treating ourselves with kindness and care.
The process of shifting our self-talk takes time. For many of us, these negative patterns have developed over decades and are deeply ingrained. By starting small and embracing what works while leaving the rest behind, in time we will reap the rewards of a wise and compassionate inner dialogue.