Overwhelmed with negative thoughts? When things at work get stressful, unpredictable, or otherwise tough, who isn’t? But negativity can hurt your productivity and demoralize everyone around you. While you can’t practice mind control, you can apply the principles of self-talk. Every time you hear that negative voice in your head, talk back to it. After a while, you’ll change your own thinking and even come to solutions much faster. Here are a few examples:
Negative thought: I get so sick of the deadlines.
Positive self-talk: I have a lot of experience keeping up with deadlines. That’s why I’m so good at doing it.
Negative thought: Why must our priority list change so much? I can’t keep up.
Positive self-talk: Since the priority list is flexible, I should divide the task into sections so that if I get distracted, I’ll know where to pick up later.
Watch for these other telltale signs of negative thoughts.
Negative thought: We’ll never finish this project. It’s doomed to fail, but what do they expect?
Positive self-talk: We need to find ways to finish this project. They’re depending on us.
Negative thought: Things are so bad that I’ll probably get demoted by the time the year’s up.
Positive self-talk: Things are challenging, but I know we’ll find ways to keep up.
Negative thinking: So many employees have left that we’ll never be able to replace them. Then what?
Positive self-talk: What are some ways we can attract new employees?
Negative thought: What if we don’t get approval for this project?
Positive self-talk: We should think of ways to approach this project so we can get approval.
Negative thought: What if we don’t have enough time to finish the presentation?
Positive self-talk: We need to manage our time so that we can finish that presentation.
Negative thought: I just can’t stand this—I’m overwhelmed.
Positive self-talk: Sure, I’ve had this much pressure before, and I got through it okay.
Negative thought: I can’t take one more e-mail demanding my attention.
Positive self-talk: I’m going to open only the top-priority e-mails today and not look at the others until tomorrow morning.