How To Find and Strengthen Your Best Self

This week we are talking about how to find and strengthen your best self by adding positive scripts to your happiness toolbox.  Experts tell us that we have around 77,000 thoughts in a day and a lot of these are negative.  This week I share how this has worked amazingly well for me and I give you some example scripts that you can start using immediately. I am amazed at how much they have done for me. I can’t wait for you to try it yourself!

Resources I referenced this week:

Ultimate Confidence book by Marissa Peer

Master Your Money Mindset Course with Doris Belland

I hope you enjoy this week’s podcast. Don’t forget we’d love to see you over on the Facebook Group, The Happier You Podcast!
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Episode Transcript

Hi, happy people. And welcome back.  Today we’re talking about how to find and strengthen your best self.

Experts say that we have around 77,000 thoughts in a day, and most of those are negative.

So, are you like me? And you’re kind of wondering how do you change your thinking and make it more positive without it being the “rah rah” positive affirmations that, I don’t know about you, but when I used to do them, they felt fake.

So today I’m going to suggest positive scripts.

Reminding yourself, who you want to become is powerful.

Challenge yourself to bring out the best in yourself. So, you know, I always have a story to back up what I’m talking about right? 

Back in the summer of 2020, I took a Master Your Money Mindset course with my friend, Doris.  Doris teaches financial literacy. 

In the Master Your Money Mindset course, you’re going into your past and remembering negative experiences that you’ve had or negative scripts that you’ve already been taught through different experiences or from the people around you.

And then you’re figuring out how to replace those with a positive ones.

Here’s the other thing, though, the game changer for me was when Doris says the trick with positive scripts are that you have to believe them! And that was such a big deal for me because in the past, when I was trying out positive affirmations, I rarely believed them.

Doris explained that’s because the bully in your brain basically uses that as an excuse to beat up on you and laugh at you and say, “yeah, right. Like you’re ever going to do that!”

Let me tell you about an experience I had that contributed to some of the negative scripting that I had.

Now, before I do that, don’t worry, I’m going to share a PDF of a bunch of positive scripting with you, so you can get a better feel for what they are. And I’ll explain more about that at the end.

I had told Doris in one of our coaching sessions that I remembered when I was 11 and we were at a family vacation on the waterfront in England.  And there, there were slot machines that kids were allowed to use.

I was having a great old time. I had a couple of dollars in my pocket and I started this winning streak. And at one point I was on top of the world. I had 12 British pounds worth of credit and with the exchange rate of the day, would have given me around $24.

And I have to tell you, I felt like the richest 11-year-old in the world!

It was amazing. But as you can probably imagine. That money disappeared in seconds.  A couple more pulls of the handle, and it was all gone.  Completely wiped out.

I was devastated.

I was so upset with myself that I would have had that money and lost it on being greedy and selfish and wanting more.

And this is the script that I held on to for years is that I don’t trust myself to make money decisions when it’s large emotional purchases. So, Doris gave me a script through the coaching that I was much more comfortable with. So the script I used to replace the negative one was:

I Trust myself to make smart choices.  I let go of mistakes made in the past. They are part of my education.

That spoke to me. It felt good to me. And it was definitely a positive replacement for the negative thoughts I was having.  I’ve been doing that script for about six months.

This year, I’ve decided that I’m going to do things that scare and stretch me.

So I accepted a few speaking engagements where I share launching my podcast and the happiness journey that ensued. In the presentation that I was most nervous about. I had a technical difficulty and in the middle of my presentation, I lost my speaking notes. I was literally in the middle of a sentence and I must’ve clicked somewhere wrong with my mouse.

And all of a sudden it was gone, and I froze.

 I actually said out loud, “um, I have lost my speaking notes.”  Luckily we managed to get them back. It felt like it took a while to me, but people who were at the presentation said they barely even noticed. For me., I couldn’t believe how I froze in that moment. 

 I knew my material I should have just kept going.  But whatever happened to me in that moment, I panicked, and I totally froze.

After the presentation was done. my husband asked, how did it go? I actually laughed and said, “Well, it went okay. But more importantly, I learned a pretty important lesson.”

I learned that you should always print out your speaking notes in case there’s technical difficulties.  And I told him the whole story.  But here’s the real story behind it. I forgave myself and moved on from that mistake.

I learned from it. And then let it go.

In the past, the old Bona would have spent two weeks telling herself how stupid she was. Asking, who screws up like that? So unprofessional. And all sorts of other negative judgmental comments like that would have just gone nonstop through my brain.

I would probably revisit that moment every time I had a potential presentation and wonder if I was worth sharing the story of this journey with others. Good thing for me, that was the old Bona.

The new and improved me had another presentation two days later, and she had her speaking notes printed out!  I learned from that mistake and I moved on and was a better presenter.

I accepted that it was part of my education and I didn’t berate myself. Let me tell you that positive script Doris gave me was so powerful. I hadn’t even realized that it had changed something in me until I looked back at that presentation and realized I could let it go.

And I have to say it actually created a proud moment where I could accept that I can make mistakes as part of my education and move on and learn from it. I don’t have to dwell on it.

I’m sharing this with you because I think this is another powerful tool in your happiness toolbox.

What positive scripts could you introduce into your life to change some of those 77,000 thoughts to more positive than negative?

This has been such a gift to me that I’m excited for you to try it for yourself. Please don’t think this is a quick fix. Remember I did this for about six months before I realized that it had showed up in my life.

It’s a habit that I had been doing in blind faith.

And honestly, I enjoy doing it because they feel good to read.  They genuinely spoke to me and about the better me that I wanted to become.

I told you that I created a PDF with some examples. And I got some of these from Doris’s Facebook page. I actually also asked one of my accountability groups to share theirs with me.

 I’ve shared these with you so that you can look through this list and see which ones feel good to you.  And which ones feel believable to you. Remember, those are two really important points.

If you want to create your own, then please do. But if you’re like me and you need a little help from other people, then take as many as you want from the list I provided and feel free to make them your own.

Change them up as long as they stay positive.

Just for some examples before you had to the PDF, some of the ones that you’re going to see there are:

 I use my time in a way that gets me closer to my goals. I choose progress over procrastination. Another one.

I allow myself to grow, to learn and to achieve my goals easily, without pain.

I keep my positive scripts on sticky notes across the bottom of my computer monitor, but I know other friends put theirs with stickies on their mirrors.  Some have it in index cards that they carry in their purse and at their desk.

Ultimately you want to keep them where when you have a free moment, you can look over them and read them to yourself.

So, you know what today’s challenges, right? You’re going to look through the PDF or come up with at least three of your own positive scripts to replace negative ones that you have.  Think about things that you regularly get upset with yourself about and see if there’s something there that you can replace that script with something believable and that feels good.

Today’s quote is from Marisa peer. I got it from her book, Ultimate Confidence, and she says,

“Whatever we tell ourselves our mind absorbs and accepts the strongest force in all of us is that we turn into our expectations, whether they are good or bad.”

Marissa Peer

So today I’m inviting you to make some good expectations, some positive expectations of yourself and read those to yourself daily.

It’s exciting and fun. And I have to say, when you start realizing that you’ve internalized this stuff and you can let go of the mistakes of the past, you can feel great about the present and learn from those mistakes. It’s an amazing feeling.

And I hope that you get to experience this as well. Just remember patience.

Thanks for listening. Happy people. If you want any more or information about the book, Ultimate Confidence by Marisa Peer or the Master Your Money Mindset with Doris Belland, both of those links will be in the show notes and you can get information about both of them there.

Remember, we’d love for you to rate and review us wherever you listen to your podcast.

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Special shout out to the 21 Day Happiness Challenge people. We are at day eight today, and I’m loving all the interaction and feedback you are sharing publicly and privately. I think you’re all doing amazing, and I want to encourage you to keep with it and thank you for being a part of it.

All right happy people. Have a good one and go get your happy on.