Hey everybody, it's your girl, Dawn Damon! Welcome to The BraveHearted Woman Podcast, a podcast designed to empower you, as a midlife woman.

If you're listening to this podcast, and you are, then that means you're not willing to settle for average, that means you want a great and amazing life. Not because of me necessarily, although that doesn't hurt. But because you're listening to content that helps you become all that you're supposed to be content that inspires you and motivates you. That's what we're all about here, pouring into you to believe for great things, never settle, and never accept mediocrity, when God has an amazing plan for your life.

I've watched too many women make it to mid-life only to say I'm done. Now you got to keep on going. The tape is yet ahead of you keep on running, keep running that race. Actually, if you're taking air in your lungs, you wake up another day. That means God's got another amazing opportunity ahead for you. I want to talk to you today about your self-talk.

Now, so many times, when we are people of faith, women of faith, Christians, we think that if something has to do with self, it's completely evil, that we shouldn't have it. Well listen, God created us to be spiritual people, He put us in a body. So we're having a human experience in this body. But he also gave us a soul ~ a soul that needs to minister to a soul that needs to grow, stretch, and be renewed your soul is your mind and your will and your emotions. I'm not saying that your soul life or that your mind your will and your emotions are how you're supposed to live life. Your spirit is in control. But we don't just let our souls go dormant. We do nothing. We don't find fulfillment in the building just that soul life. But we don't ignore it.

So how is your self-talk? Because you have self-talk, you might want to be all spiritual, and you might want to ignore it. But let me tell you something. If you want to know where the direction of your life is headed, then listen to the words that are coming out of your mouth. Because your words are an indicator of where you're going. In fact, your words really are an indicator of where you are right now. How you believe what you expect of life, what you think is going to happen for you whether or not you have a victim mindset or a powerful mindset. Listen to the words of your mouth, what's coming out of your mouth. So today, we're gonna dive into it.

Then for the next 30 days. He spoke accordingly to the jar that had the label on it for love. He spoke to it. He said You're beautiful. I love you. You're amazing. You have greatness inside of you. You're talented. You're skilled, you're strong. I love you. I adore you. I think you're wonderful. You get the point. Hey, when was the last time you heard somebody speak those words to you? If it's been a while been a hot minute. Let me tell you something. You are beautiful. I can say that with all assurance because you were created in the image of God. And one of my friends says God doesn't make any junk.

Okay, then the next jar he took and he spoke to it. Words of hate. I hate you You're an idiot, you're never gonna amount to anything I despise you get out of my sight. You're ugly. I don't want you to go away. Oh! It's hard just to even speak those words, that's difficult.

And then he took the third one that said, ignore. What he did do with that? Exactly that he just ignored it. He didn't speak to it. He is just a stonewall, you don't exist. Now, neither of these jars could hear the words of the others. He did this every day for 30 days. Well, at the end of 30 days, the results showed that the rice that heard the lovely beautiful words was still in good condition. And it was still almost edible. Then the words that were spoken over the hate rice, noticed that they were moldy. They were gross. They were bad. And then the jar with the words ignore on it. They didn't do so well either. They had become fermented and mushy.

Dr. Emoto proves what the Bible already told us. Words have power. Now some people have tried this experiment. You may want to try it in school rooms and classes, with teachers, Bible studies, and individuals, who've tried this experiment with varying results. Of course, you're not in the lab. So is the rice contaminated? Was it airtight? Was everything the same? But most of them had similar results. But for those that didn't. Here's what we do find whether you got those same results or not.

So one of the most powerful factors in self-transformation is this whole principle of self-talk. How are you speaking to yourself? What are you saying to yourself? Because if you're going to improve your life. Then the first thing you're going to find out is that you have to improve the way you are speaking over yourself, you're not going to reach your goals with a defeated type of words. Is that a word defeated? It is now and you get the point. You're not going to win, you're not going to have a million-dollar life with a minimum wage. That’s not going to happen.

Now, research tells us and we've all heard this, that our brain is like this supercomputer, right? It is amazing. You have so much more ability and knowledge and power and capability than you know. But did you know that the programmer of the supercomputer is indeed your mouth, your self-talk? Isn't that interesting? Just like the rice experience, experiment. Your brain is eavesdropping on what's coming out of your mouth, and then it acts accordingly. You're literally giving orders to your brain. Are you saying oh, I can't get this? I can't do it. I'm stupid. I can't lose weight. Be careful with that one. I'm not smart enough. I'm not skilled enough. Your brain goes ‘Oh, okay. Hey, newsflash to the rest of the body. She said we can't, so don't do it.’ Your positive self-talk actually will encourage and teach your brain to push you higher, give you solution-oriented creativity, and open up your mind to powerful ideas.

What are the words I'm looking for? ~ creativity or inspiration. There it is. Your brain will provide you with energy for the tasks at hand to it and trained you to expect greatness. But when you're speaking negatively, I'm going to tell you about the science that supports all this. But when you're speaking negatively, your brain learns to hold you back and give you limitations, justifications, rationalization, rationalizations, reasons why it can't be done, you can't do it, or why you shouldn't try and that you should expect failure. You're not something enough and avoid those risky, brave actions. You cannot doubt you cannot speak doubt and defeat and expect a life of courage and victory. We already know that. So how's your script?

Your life is meant to be a masterpiece. But maybe your self-talk script is average. It's not an alignment with a masterpiece. Don't let that happen to you who don't have an average storyline. Your life is meant to be a page-turner. Yes! So start speaking life.

Now while you're working on healthy self-talk, you're going to discover no doubt that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So you can't just change the words you're gonna find dissonance. If something in your heart doesn't agree with something that's coming out of your mouth. Do you have a mindset? That's a victim mindset that checks it out. Are you personalizing? Does that mean you're blaming yourself for everything you're self-shaming yourself judging? If that's alive, that personalizing. Find out if that's going on because you can't change your self-talk without changing that mindset.

What about magnifying? You focus on the negative, you see only the negative, and when all you do is see the negative aspects of a situation if you're ignoring anything that's positive. I have many clients that I coach, and one kind of comes to mind right now that she's doing so much better today. But she was just raised in a situation that was always negative. Her mom struggled with fault-finding. I will walk into a room and I won't see what's beautiful, I won't see what's lovely. I won't compliment you or encourage you. What I will do is notice the very first thing ~ what's wrong, and that's what comes out of my mouth. That's magnifying. If that's going on, you can't change self-talk alone, you've got to address that inner situation.

What about catastrophizing? That's part of being maybe even a trauma survivor, that you expect the worst, you're ready for the other shoe to drop any moment. When you hear it or see it or think you hear the shoe dropping, bam, you're there, you rarely let logic persuade you. Otherwise, you are expecting the worst, and basically, create the worst. Gonna have a hard time getting those words to align. What comes first, by the way, the mindset or the words, well, they're so interconnected, it's hard to know, because the cycle is if I speak the wrong thing, I feel the wrong thing. When I feel the wrong thing. I speak the wrong thing. Let's add thinking in there when I think the wrong thing. I say the wrong thing I feel the wrong thing, I think the wrong thing, we've got to break the cycle of crazy. You can do it by just adjusting one of them yourself talk.

Lastly, maybe there's a polarizing going on in your mind. That's why you speak the way you do. Good or bad. Hero or villain. No in between black and white. No middle ground. You categorize everything as good or bad and then speak accordingly. But when you begin to recognize these negative ways that you're thinking, you can work on them to turn them into positive thinking, godlike thinking, renewing the mind. Philippians 4:8, ‘Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is a good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.’ You can. It doesn't happen overnight. But you can renew your mind that area of your soul that needs to be renewed because you otherwise are going to fall into decay. In other words, nothing left to itself goes good, you cannot speak negatively.

We've already talked about that and expect a good life. So let me just give you the quick things we don't have a whole lot of time left. But women let me empower you with this real quick. I just want to give you a few tips on how you can immediately begin to change your self-talk.

1. Eliminate I can't. Thank Tony Robbins for this phrase. I can~tations Stop saying I can't. Because the minute you do, you won't. If you want to know where you're headed. How many times do you say I can't instead speak? I can. I can~tations. I am creative. I am able. I am capable. I am strong I can learn. Yes, you can! I can do it. So get rid of I can't. It was Henry Ford, who said the person who says I can't and the person who says I can, guess which one was right. Yeah, they both were, you will receive them according to your confession.

So here's another tip, 2. Add the word ‘Yet.’ Carol Dweck is the one. She's a professor and a psychologist. She's the one who gave us the two phrases, growth mindset, and fixed mindset. A growth mindset understands that it's elastic, it's plastic, it can stretch, it can grow, it can change it can learn. A fixed mindset has the belief that everything that I know up until this point is fixed. My talent is fixed in etched in stone. My brain is etched in stone from what I know. I know that's it, people can't change. Yes, they can.

But if you think you can't, you won't. If you think you can, you will. So add the word, yet this tiny little word when you add the word yet. You keep your mind open. Open for what once again for creative solutions, orientation, ideas, inspirations, designs, inventions, creations, growth, change, and evolution to becoming the person that God wants you to be. But if you say that's it period, no yet, then you just stay in a fixed mindset that would look like, I'm not good at Math, yet. What did we just do? I'm not good at sports, yet. But I can learn. All right, I don't care how old you are. I learned how to water ski at 52 years of age. If I could do it, you can do it.

All right. And then I got this from Terry Seville: 3. Add the word or the phrase ‘Just as I want it. If you want to tweak your language very quickly, add the phrase just as I want it in the end. If you look in the mirror and say to your body, I just cannot lose weight. My metabolism is so sluggish, just as I want it. Ooh, well, actually, maybe not. I don't want it that way. So let me stop saying that. My body is a fat-burning machine. Just as I want it. My metabolism works. Just as I want it! I'm strong and toned and healthy. Just as I want it! I can learn new things. Just as I want it! See how that can adjust your thinking.

I want to tell you that speech, the way you talk is a habit. You have your idiosyncrasies. You have your quirks. You have your habits of the way you speak. You can change them. That's the good news. But what you got to do next tip, is: 4. become aware of what you're saying. Listen to the words that are coming out of your mouth. They don't serve you well. Find out even if you're kidding, even if it's your joke, like a story of my life, it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen to me. Okay, stop it. It's not funny. You're cursing yourself with your words.

Then finally, 5. you can reframe. This is the last one: If you can reframe, see if you can notice the difference. Negative says I'll disappoint everyone if I change my mind. Positive says I have the power to change my mind and others will understand. I failed. I'm so embarrassed and I’m proud of myself for even trying, that I took courage. I am out of shape. I might as well not even bother. I'm capable and strong and I want to get healthier for me. Clearly, you see the difference at least, I hope that you see the difference.

So you can speak those powerful affirmations over yourself. You can boost your self-esteem. You can take your journal and write those affirmations down and then speak them aloud as if you have what you wanted. Right now, your brain understands incongruency and it doesn't like it. So when you speak positive affirmations, your brain goes to work to close the gap and it starts working for you 24/7 To bring you to your desired destiny. So how about it? Will you take a look and listen to yourself talk will you reroute your words and get them off the path of negativity and bring them to the path of positivity? Just bless your own self. Faith comes by hearing. What do you hear yourself saying?

All right, that's what I got for you today. I hope you've enjoyed this. I have a free gift for you. I have a list of powerful affirmations. It's your free download this month. If you want it, just click the link below and we'll make sure that you get, Dawn's Dynamic Affirmations. Right some of your own but if you just need a little prompting, I have that gift I want to give you.

Alright, everybody, I hope you're doing amazing. Don't just have a great day. Make it a great day yet it's within your power to do so. Because it's all right up here. Love you. I'm going to leave you like I always do this is Dawn Damon, the BraveHeart Mentor saying to you, is it time for you? Yes, it is to find your brave and live your vision!