Episode 9: Using the Winning Language to Reach Your Goal with Donna Campisi

Ready! Set! Goal! with Donna Campisi

I was once asked in an interview about the chapter in my book that covers ‘Winning Language.’

He asked me: What does this mean to me?

My response: It’s about how we speak to ourselves, do we speak to ourselves in a kind way?

I always use the example especially when speaking at keynote events, I say ‘Be your best friend.’

People often look at me oddly, so let me explain.

I often advise people to talk to themselves as if they were talking to their best friend.

This may sound strange at first, but it helps get your mental and physical state off to a good start.

‘You’re sounding a bit crazy, Donna.’ Maybe, but we talk to ourselves all the time.

Those thoughts in your mind are like a number of voices in your head sometimes. When we think encouraging and motivating thoughts toward ourselves, then we see results in our ability to reach our big goal.

What benefits does this positive language give you? You feel good. It really helps when you’re struggling and it motivates you to keep going.

What would you feel if you didn’t do that? You’d feel down on yourself. You’d lose self-belief and confidence, creating negative energy. If you keep being so negative and down, people don’t want to be around you and that creates negative energy towards your big goal, and you’ll never get encouragement to reach your big goal. People will want you to stop going for it because they’ll see it as something that maybe isn’t a good thing for you. But you know it’s a great thing for you, because it’s a big dream that you’ve always wanted to achieve.

So our self-talk is very important, because it’s with us every day.

It makes you grateful. It reminds you to be kind to yourself and encouraging; sometimes we can be really hard on ourselves.

Giving yourself rewards, celebrating and being kind in the way you talk to yourself – that’s what I mean by the winning language.

Talk to yourself like you would to your best friend.

This is an important point to get your mindset started on the right track!

Be your best friend. You may say, ‘I don’t understand how to be my best friend, that doesn’t make sense.’ Think of the conversation you may have had with a good friend where they were struggling with something. What words of advice or encouragement did you give them? These words you need to give to yourself.

Another example could be: of when I started to learn to run again after a childhood stroke and not running for 34 years. and then training for a marathon. I was being hard on myself, because I am the kind of person who likes to have things done yesterday and I can get impatient with myself at times.

Anyway, there were days when I worked really hard, but still there were days when I would struggle, so it wasn’t always smooth sailing (especially at the beginning). I’d really get down on myself for slowing down to walk instead of running.

But that was just the beginning. I would have these horrible thoughts in my mind, talking to myself. ‘Come on Donna, you’re being slack, this is too hard, you can do better than that surely…’ blah blah blah – criticizing myself. Sound familiar?

When I thought about this and I had a conversation with my coach, he said to me, ‘You need to talk to yourself in an encouraging way Donna.’

I totally agreed, and changed the way my thoughts, my bad habits of putting myself down, or being hard on myself, the language I used!

That’s what really helps you get to your goal, encouragement, yea?

I understand not everyone is going to ...
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