Self Talk

Friday - January 15, 2010


SELF TALK


Self talk?

It seems most often to be the stuff of
....scarey movies
....and strange looking people
.....and anything irregular.

Self Talk.

People who "are a bit deranged, a bit out of touch, and bereft of good friends they can talk to."

Yep.

They tend to go about with moving lips and funny words and strange visage.

So we don't want to get caught muttering whatevers, wherever.

Really?

Actually I think all of us are talking a lot of the time....just not out loud, not with moving lips...but brain waves are going all the time in our consciousness.
How am I doing?
What are they thinking?
What is going on?
How could they?
What does this mean...?

Thoughts are flooding us all the time.

My discovery recently has been that a bit of good self talk - even out loud - can slow down or stop the negative brainwaves that are trying to dominate emotion and even interrupt proper action.

So I have found myself at times giving voice to words like:
"that doesn't really matter that much"
- "tommorow this situation will have changed"
- "this really isn't worth getting upset about"
- "Jesus is still Lord of my life."

And in working with this process I have discovered fresh insight that I need daily from Ephesians 4:15 - it says, if we don't want to react in an infantile manner and end up getting tossed about by life, we must learn to "speak the truth in love and keep growing up into Christ" (adapted).

The insight?
The "speaking the truth" part applies to myself also.

In these days, I have found that a pointed, clear, speaking the truth to myself, even out loud, is producing a noticeable movement of my spirit in the right direction.

I think it is a basic truism of Christian mental health. Give it a try.

Oh...
And if you run out of loving words and faith words to speak to yourself, let me commend to you self talk - in other tongues/purely spiritual expression from your heart - where your spirit is released, you are giving thanks, you are moving beyond the limitations of self only. (See I Corinthians 14 for a Biblical jump-start)

For each of us today, may this be a day of stability, growth and truth spoken clearly to everyone.

Including, ourselves.

Selah.

David