How to Stop Your Sad Talk

I will be the first to admit that I have struggled with sad talk behavior. I think we all do at some point and it’s up to us to stop it. As someone who has had an anxiety disorder, I get it. It can be easy to let the circulation of negative thoughts run rampant and leave us in emotional and mental chaos. It’s easy to create a pattern of putting a hard focus on all that isn’t great in our life instead of celebrating what is. To be honest with you guys, in past seasons, I would pray to get through a rough patch, and then when I had a win in whatever was hard that day, I would barely acknowledge it and then embrace the next sad talk topic. Like self-pity was some addiction and without knowing it, I would create a habit of self-sabotage with this negative self-talk. Eventually I got sick of it and wanted to know how to knock off this bad behavior and so I wanted to share with you what I learned so you too can learn how to stop your sad talk. Friends, it’s absolutely possible and when you do, you will see breakthrough in your life.

What I love about humanity is that we have the choice to grow and not stay stagnant, but it is a choice. At some point, I concluded (or maybe it was my husband telling me to knock off the half-glass-empty-ish I was doing) that being around a person who has a mental lens of only seeing the bad in life is super annoying to be around. Constant sad talk is so irritating, exhausting, draining, emotionally taxing, hard to live with and more. For clarification, I’ve been on anti-depressants/anxiety meds for years, which I have shared with you guys in a past post that you can read called 7 Tips of fighting Anxiety and Depression .

Also, sad talk isn’t the never enough mentality I wrote about a few weeks ago, it’s simply choosing to go from one negatvive thing to the next.

Here are some examples of Sad Talk

 Sad Talk Example One: Praying for financial breakthrough and it comes. You take .5 seconds to celebrate your breakthrough though you’ve been lamenting about this for five months. Then something happens like someone looked at you wrong and now that’s your new negative nancy hard focus.

Sad Talk Example Two: You are complaining because you don’t feel like you have a purpose in life and that you aren’t doing what you ultimately want to do career wise or more. Then, something rolls around like a new cool opportunity, you take it, are happy for five minutes and then are complaining that you now have a job to go to.  It’s absolute self-sabotage and so the cycle of sad talk continues.

Here’s the truth, you and I all fall short somewhere because we aren’t perfect humans. We all suck a little. We have good days and we have bad days. We yell at our kids one day and then feel guilty and buy them ice cream the next (oh wait-maybe that’s just me?). That’s where grace comes into the picture. If you struggle with talking down to yourself and going from one negative thing to the next, here are a few ways to stop your sad talk.

How to Stop Your Sad Talk

1. Take Responsibility: If you want to change, you first need to take responsibility. Take a hard look at your life. Do you go from one disappointment to the next or do you go from one break-through to the next? Which one do you focus on, celebrate, and talk about most? Do you talk about the hard things far more than the good? Do you put more emotional energy into being thankful for that new job opportunity, new friendships, random prayers answered? Or does your energy constantly go back to what isn’t? If you aren’t living a life of gratitude, you’re probably embracing sad talk. You are responsible for your life and what you think; you aren’t a victim. You need to take responsibility first and stop blaming everybody and everything before you can change. (I am also not referring to abusive situations. If you are in an abusive home situation, get out, that is different.)

2. Create a New Pattern: From experience, creating a new habit and new way of thinking and a new thought pattern is difficult but it can be done. With that said, you can’t start your journey of learning to stop your sad talk by telling yourself it’s too hard and you can’t do it. After you take responsibility for your sad talk behavior, you can begin to practice thinking differently. You can do this by stopping your negative thoughts in its tracks the second they pop their ugly head up and divert them to something positive. Do this over and over and over again until what once felt impossible seems to become your new standard.

3. Meditation and Prayer: Get a stack of note cards and write down positive affirmations to yourself. I write down Bible verses in loads and try to memorize them so I can repeat them in my head when my sad talk starts coming to my head. I pray a lot and thank God for all of the good things in my life and all of the things I am being taught in every season whether it’s good or bad.

If praying or meditating sounds daunting to you, consider this: how many hours have you spent cozied up to your sad talk? Flip it around friends, if you want to stop your negative mindset, you can, and it’s on you to do it!
Here’s the truth, you don’t have to live from one negative thing to the next, you have the choice to turn it around which will eventually turn your life around. Choose to live a life of gratitude, and positivity–stop your sad talk, and start your new positive-mind normal.

xo,

Kendra