In the early 1970s comedian Flip Wilson popularized the expression “the devil made me do it” through his character Geraldine Jones. The Flip Wilson Show was the second highest rated program on TV at one point in the early 1970s and there were always roars of laughter each time “Geraldine” said, “the devil made me do it”. It seems to be human nature for us to want to blame someone else or some circumstance rather than ourselves for something we did or didn’t do but instead of saying the “devil made me do it” we should say “my programming made me do it”. However, that doesn’t mean we should just blame our programming and not accept the responsibility or consequences for our actions, rather that we should recognize what causes us to do the things we do and make changes to do them differently in the future.

Where does our programming come from? Our programming is an accumulation of everything we’ve ever heard, seen and felt. The things we’ve heard, seen and felt the most times, and which had the greatest emotional impact on us becomes our programming. Our programming, also known as self-talk, comes from many sources—anyone we interact with can be a source of our self-talk but the self-talk we create from family and friends often have the biggest impact on us.

Can we change our self-talk? Absolutely, in fact it is our responsibility, no one else’s, to change any self-talk that does not help us be the person we want to be or achieve the things we want to achieve.

How can we change our self-talk? We can use positive affirmations to change our self-talk, which in turn will change our actions and our habits that have been sabotaging our efforts to be all that we can be.

So the next time you’re tempted to say “the devil made me do it” instead recognize what your self-talk was that caused you to take that action and replace it with a positive affirmation.

A paradigm is originally a Greek scientific term and there are different definitions of it, and of paradigm shift, but I like the following definitions given in the Cambridge University Press Dictionary. Paradigm (pronounced pair-a-dime): a model of something, or a very clear and typical example of something; Paradigm Shift: when the usual and accepted way of doing or thinking about something is changed.

When baby elephants are being trained to stay in one spot they are tethered with a thick rope that is attached to a stake firmly hammered into the ground. The elephant will try for a time to break free but being unable to do so it accepts the fact that the rope and stake is holding it in place (it’s paradigm) and it can’t break free. When the elephant’s trainer sees that the elephant has accepted it’s paradigm he replaces the thick rope with a thin rope and although the elephant is easily capable of breaking free it makes no attempt to do so–even after it is an adult–why not?–the power of paradigms.

A few years ago I read the following story about some research that had been done, I believe in Canada, that clearly showed the limiting belief paradigms can have. Some predatory fish were placed in a large tank filled with water, a clear pane of glass was placed across the center of the tank and other fish which were the predatory fishes’ favorite prey were added to the other side of the tank. Instantly the predatory fish went wild and darted for the prey only to come to an abrupt halt against the pane of glass that they couldn’t see. They continued to go after their prey for a time but after repeated attempts to reach their prey failed they resigned themselves to their paradigm (they couldn’t reach their prey) and stopped trying. Then the researchers removed the pane of glass but the predatory fish made no attempts to attack their prey (which I would imagine were cowering in a corner)–why not?–the power of paradigms.

Bob Proctor, featured on “The Secret” video, Larry King Live and in many other venues tells a great story (click on the audio player below) about how our reality is based on our paradigms--which may be different from someone else’s paradigm/reality. If you want more on paradigms from Bob Proctor you can watch his 8 minute video on the CREATING A PARADIGM SHIFT WITH POSITIVE SELF TALK page.

I’ll close this post with a story from Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People where he gives a great example of paradigm blindness. The following story is taken from Proceedings, the magazine of the Naval Institute, where Frank Koch writes: “Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers in heavy weather for several days. I was serving on the lead battleship and was on watch on the bridge as night fell. The visibility was poor with patchy fog, so the captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities. Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported, “Light bearing on the starboard bow.” “Is it steady or moving astern?” the caption called out. Lookout replied, “Steady captain,” which meant we were on a collision course with that ship. The captain then called to the signalman, “Signal that ship: We are on a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees.” Back came the signal, “advisable for you to change course 20 degrees. The captain said, “Send, I’m a captain, change course 20 degrees.” “I’m a seaman second class,” came the reply. “You had better change course 20 degrees.” By that time the captain was furious. He spat out, “Send I’m a battleship. Change course 20 degrees.” Back came the flashing light, “I’m a light house.” We changed course.” Do you have “paradigm blindness”—is it time to get those paradigms checked?

If you want to read more about paradigms you can go to the CREATING A PARADIGM SHIFT WITH POSITIVE SELF TALK page.

“A man is what he thinks about all day long”.

The title of this post was inspired by a quote from one of my favorite movies—”Cool Hand Luke”. The quote was from the warden of the prison to Luke after Luke was returned to prison following his second escape. The movie is loaded with quotes that I love, and although the most often repeated quote from the movie is probably: “what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate” I love the first quote because it reminds me of what we need to do if we want to make any type of sustained change in our lives. If we want to lose weight and keep it off we’ve got to “get our mind right—and I mean right”; if we want to stop smoking we’ve got to “get our mind right—and I mean right”—-and on and on.  How many times have you tried to change a habit and after a long, or sometimes very short, struggle you backslid into your old habit?—if you’re like me—a lot, and it’s because you’re gonna get your mind right Luke if you want to make lasting change.

How do we “get our mind right”?—First we have to recognize the negative self-talk that we may be engaging in, such as; “it’s no use—no matter how hard I try I can’t lose weight” (which is not a medically true statement except for maybe some extreme cases), “I can’t remember peoples names—I just don’t have a good memory” (some people do seem to have a natural talent for remembering things but that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t develop a good memory) and _________ (fill in the blank with your own negative self-talk). If you listen closely to your self-talk you’ll often hear yourself repeating the same negative self-talk over and over throughout the day. Some of the things we say to ourselves over and over is so offensive that if someone else were to say them to us we would be very angry with them but we tolerate it from ourselves. Just because we sometimes talk bad to ourselves does that mean we don’t like ourselves?—not necessarily it could just be that we’ve formed bad habits of negative self-talk. So now that we recognize our negative self-talk how do we get rid of it? Since our self-talk is really just our thoughts we can’t just stop it (even in deep meditation we can only slow down our self-talk (thoughts) so instead we must replace it with positive self-talk—which is created by repetition and proper use of positive affirmations.

Émile Coué (February 26, 1857 – July 2, 1926) (a French psychologist and pharmacist) may well have been the person who introduced Personal Development based on the use of positive affirmations—at a minimum he was a very successful pioneer in the field. Dr. Coué  is not only credited with helping thousands of people overcome mental and physical ailments with the use of positive affirmations, such as his famous affirmation, “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better” he is also credited with being a major influence on 20th Century Personal Development masters; Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Shuler, and W. Clement Stone.

I’ll close this post with a reminder; if you’re going to change something in your life—you’ve got to change something in your life, and if you’re going to change something in your life “you’re gonna get your mind right—and I mean right”.

It seems only fitting that my maiden blog post should be about the first self-talk book I read—actually I “heard” it before I read it when my mother read it to me at about four years of age. Now before you start thinking my mother strange for reading a self help book to me before I was old enough to read I should mention that the book was “The Little Engine That Could”. I really believe I can still hear my mother reading the words, “I Think I Can, I Think I Can”. What a great message for kids to hear and just as relevant now as it was when “The Little Engine That Could” book was first published in 1954.

We started hearing about so many of the things we couldn’t do before we could even understand the words spoken—sometimes we just understood the “hand language”….the hand on the butt. I’ve read about some research which shows the average person hears “no” or “you can’t do that” 148,000 times by the age of 18. Now, personally I’m glad I heard “no” and “no, you can’t do that”—things like “no, you can’t play in the middle of the street”, “no, you can’t stay up until midnight—you’re only 5 years old , or any other “no, you can’t” that protected me in some way. I’m equally grateful for the times I heard Positive Affirmations, like, “yes you can do it” or “you can do anything you put your mind to”. One reason we’re told “no” so much when we’re young is because we haven’t developed good judgment of our own yet but after we’re more matured we need to re-evaluate our old programming to see if it’s still relevant.

Some of the negative things we heard as children came from other children, things like “hey fatty”, “you’re just about as stupid as you look” or (fill in your own favorite childhood insult)—there were many to choose from—unless you grew up on some other planet than I did.  Now I contend that whoever came up with “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” was deaf, and could not read lips either .  But, the past is the past—it’s time to let those old insults, that may have turned into negative self-talk, go.

Some of the negative things we heard as children, and still do, were not intended to hurt us but may still be affecting us today—I can still remember being in choir class some 30+ years ago and having the teacher ask me to stop singing—actually she didn’t voice the request she just tapped me on the shoulder, but it was understood that if you got tapped it meant you should stop singing. Now if I can still vividly remember that episode today you can imagine that I didn’t choose singing as a career. Maybe the talent wasn’t there but just maybe if I had been given a positive affirmation, like, “I know you can sing in key—just keep trying” I might have developed in to a talented singer like Elvis—okay that’s pushing the point but you get what I mean. How about you—can you remember something you heard as a child that might have stopped you from doing something you might have really been good at or at least enjoyed doing? Just imagine if you had grown up using the positive affirmation “I think I can, I think I can”—don’t you think you would have achieved a lot more of the things you wanted to achieve? Well, it’s never to late to change—start listening to your self-talk, especially when you’re under stress, and see what you’re telling yourself now—for many people it’s pretty negative talk. In future post we’ll talk about ways to change the negative self-talk and replace it by using Positive Affirmations—which will turn into positive self-talk—but for now remember the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson—“A man is what he thinks about all day long”.

P.S. If you want a copy of “The Little Engine That Could” book for your children you can find it at Amazon

Positive words are powerful and when we use them to affirm something about ourselves they are positive affirmations. These positive affirmations when correctly formed and repeatedly impressed on our sub-conscious mind become positive self-talk which in turn will help us change habits and paradigms that are not in alignment with our goals and dreams.

My mission with Self Talk 4 Success is to assist you in recognizing and changing negative self-talk which may be keeping you from achieving your goals and dreams. Any habit or paradigm (poor eating habits, smoking, procrastination, to name a few) can be changed with positive affirmations and positive self-talk but we must first recognize the poor habit or paradigm and then create positive self-talk thru the repeated use of positive affirmations to change them.

Again, welcome to Self Talk 4 Success–I hope you come back soon and often.

P.S. Remember the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “A man is what he thinks about all day long”.