That inner voice is talking to us all the time. It’s our SELF, talking to us. Most of this inner talk is NEGATIVE, preventing us from enjoying life and creating our goals.

This negative self-talk comes from bad programming that we took to heart from childhood right through to adulthood. Word by word, year by year, our life scripts were formed. Self-images were etched into our brains.

We came to believe what we were being told by others, parents, teachers, friends, and what we were telling ourselves.

Repeatedly, the same words were told to us, what we could do, what we should do, and what we could not do. This wrong programming became a WALL which stood between us and our future. This programming became our FOE without us realizing it.

The negative conditioning we received for years has to be erased or replaced with different programming or it will stay with us for the rest of our lives.

So, what do we need to replace the bad conditioning? We need two things, positive self-talk and the desire to make good life choices.

We need positive SELF-TALK. A word for word set of directions, to repeat to our subconscious. This will be your new conditioning.

I will give you some examples of positive SELF-TALK which will be your FRIEND.

When you read these examples, SAVOUR the feeling you get.

Self-Talk:

“I am control of my mind.”

“I am living my life in a way which creates my strengths, my happiness, and my positive thoughts.”

“I am positive and confident. I like who I am and I’m glad to be me.”

“I begin each day with a plan to get the most from my time and effort. I follow my plan and I reach my goals.”

I’m sure you can come up with many more uplifting statements for yourself. Remember, when you state it, you create it! We make choices everyday and those choices create our success or failure in life, our happiness or misery.

Your good choices create powerful self-directed programs. Good choices can override past negative conditioning.

Each time you make a choice, you define what you want, what you hope for, what you believe about yourself, and what you believe about others around you.

Life Choice statements:

“I choose to give myself the time to do the things I want to do and to give myself the space to create.”

“I choose NOT to accept bad vibes from others and NOT to care how they feel about my response to their criticisms.”

There are two BIG choices to make:

Choices of Attitude and Choices of Action.

These two kinds of choices work together.

Choices of attitude have to do with how you feel about something.

How you look at things.

Lets create a scenario and ask some questions:

A colleague at work is always criticizing the way you go about doing your job.

How do you feel about this? Angry, you say.

How do I choose to feel about this? I shouldn’t let him get under my skin.

How do I feel now? I feel indifferent and I will ignore him.

So, you changed from anger to ignoring. You’ve changed your attitude.

Choices of action tell us what we will do about our change of attitude. In the above example you could go to the boss about your annoying colleague.

Now, how about the big choices that set our direction in life.

Love is a choice. You say: “ I choose to love and to be loved.”

This is the desire to make a relationship work. But of course, this is a two way street. It depends on the other person too, do they have the same desire?

To make love work, you have to admire and respect who the other person is.

Success is a choice. Start believing in what you can do, and stop believing in what you can’t do. The present doesn’t wait for the future!

Stand in front of your mirror and repeat: “I am successful. I deserve to be successful. I choose to be successful.” This would start your believing it in your subconscious and then it would work into your conscious.

Happiness is a choice. Some people live with unhappiness, the color has disappeared from their life. They don’t have the energy, or enthusiasm for living each day.

But, they can change, because happiness is an attitude and your attitudes are always up to you!

So, get in front of that mirror again and say: “I choose to be happy today.” Keep

repeating that at different times during the day. You will change your attitude to happiness.

A new day, a new life, and new things to learn!

We control everything. We decide what we do, where we go, how we react, and especially, what we focus on.

It’s your life. Do what you want to do!

Here’s a couple of departing thoughts on Choice:

When you need to make a choice and don’t make it, that in itself is a choice.

When life throws a knife at you, there are two ways of catching it, by the blade or by the handle.

Also published on Medium.