Contributed by: Bethany Reynolds, AFAA-CPT, CI-GEL
Are You Talking to Yourself or Listening to Yourself?
One marker of your personal longevity, that you can’t measure with a blood
test or a lab scan, is your self talk. The “negative” words you say to
yourself can place you at a greater risk of early mortality. However, many
negative people don’t recognize that they’re always being negative, making this a
difficult marker for people to be self-aware of. In their eyes,
they’re simply being “realistic,” and their comments are honest observations of
a dysfunctional and unfair world. Maybe so, or maybe you’re making an excuse.
Maybe you’re making the world out to be a den of inequity and injustice
because that makes it easier to give up and stop trying. If you can’t beat
it, why strive?
Today try to observe the tone of your self-talk. Are you degrading
yourself inside your own head? Are you thinking things that make you feel
weak? Do you apply a fatalistic stamp to every new idea or enjoyable
possibility that comes to mind?
An example of negative self-talk: “Ah, geez. Where’s my phone again? Looks
like I’m getting old!”
If you’re going around grumbling at the world and bemoaning your place in
it, your wish may come true sooner than you think. What you think eventually becomes what you say, and what you say eventually becomes who you are- speak good into your life.
Read more longevity markers to track at