Understanding how you experience life gives you greater control over your actions. Many live as though they believe that when something happens they merely react to it; Not taking into account how self-talk, memories and emotions play a huge factor.

Everyone constantly has thoughts running through their mind. It’s almost like a sound track to a movie. The music is there, but you don’t always pay attention to it. Becoming more aware of what you are saying to yourself gives you the potential to gain insight into the choices you make. Eventually you can then learn how to literally stop and think before you act.

It’s all about ME! Does that sound a little selfish? It would if I was referring to “me,” but I have a different meaning in mind. The “M” stands for memories and the “E” stands for emotions. These letters are the missing ingredients to what you experience in life. Most people act as though they believe life is nothing more than “input and output.” Something happens to you and you react to it. Your psychology class called this “S-R,” or stimulus response. Nowadays it’s pretty obvious that a lot more goes on besides these two items.

Yet, in addition to memories and emotions, are two more letters, “s-t.” They stand for “self-talk.” This is the conversation constantly going on in your mind. Most refer to them as thoughts. Of course, many don’t even think much about them because they are like the soundtrack in a movie or TV show. The music is there in the background, but you don’t always notice it.

Backing up for a moment, let’s consider the big picture. As noted already, the input (I) comes first. These are experiences you have, like when the alarm clock goes off in the morning. Your reaction is to turn it off or hit the snooze button. These actions are the output (O). Between the input and the output are the memories (M) and emotions (E). Upon hearing the alarm you have memories about previous days running through your mind. This past history from your life influences how you might feel. If the last few days have been good, then you might actually look forward to getting up.

During each of these four stages you have thoughts, or self-talk, going on constantly in your mind. Besides considering self-talk like a musical background, it might be more helpful to think of it in terms of watching a sports game on TV. Whenever you watch an event there is always a commentator or two telling you about what you are seeing or relating something about what you see to other information. These people even give you an opinion or two along the way. In your own mind you have thoughts that are more like a commentator giving you an opinion about what’s happening.

As you can guess these are commonly gloomy thoughts and you might say they “bug” you. So what you need to do is to stop bugging yourself with negative self-talk. Yet, it’s not as simple as just thinking positive thoughts. That’s because few are even aware of all the self-talk going on in their mind. For every simple “positive” statement you make, there are usually several times more negative thoughts that are below the surface like an iceberg. Thus, the first challenge is to become totally aware of your hidden thoughts. Only then can you take an optimistic view that is realistic to your situation.

Imagine you’re still in school and have to a give a speech. Just before going to the front of the class you could envision yourself throwing up in the middle of the talk, or everyone laughing at what you say. Just thinking you have the best speech ever written and others are going to ask for autograph copies of it will not calm your nerves. Instead, go for a better outlook consistent with the facts. Take the most positive perspective possible without twisting reality.

This becomes difficult because of the previous experiences running through your head. These are the memories that were mentioned at the beginning. If you have commonly done poorly in giving speeches, then you will expect to do the same next time. Focusing on this will then impact your emotions as you get up to give the speech. But the past doesn’t have to be repeated. Each situation is new. Admit what you are facing isn’t easy, and while you probably won’t get an A+ on the assignment, you can get a decent grade because you worked hard and prepared it the best you could.

So, being aware of the memories and the emotions (ME) that are going on in your experiences, along with the self-talk will help you to be able to change your outcome (output).

William O’Flaherty works as a family counselor in the Uniontown area and writes a blog on self-talk at StopBuggingYourself.com

December 27, 2009