How to Sing Better: Improving Your Self-Talk

“Stop thinking, and end your problems.”
Lao Tzu

“Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”
Lao Tau

These powerful words by Lao Tzu, the author of the Tao Te Ching hold, I believe, the key to all success and failure in life. Everything begins with the way in which we choose to think. By extension, our self-talk-the ways in which we think about and then talk to ourselves- can have a considerable impact on the success or failure of our careers and our lives.

Our self-talk or the ways in which we talk to and think about ourselves can have a huge impact on the success or failure of our careers and lives.

As we go about our daily lives, we are constantly interpreting each situation we find ourselves in and reacting to that situation either positively or negatively. Our inner commentator is called self-talk. It includes both thoughts we are conscious of and thoughts and beliefs that are unconscious.

Most people are not aware of the constant chatter in their minds. Random thoughts can appear seemingly out of nowhere, causing us distress as one thought links to another and then another.

Learning to control our thoughts and the resulting self-talk that rises out of those thoughts is essential if we want to have happy, successful lives and careers.

Much of our self-talk is self-deprecating, based on comparing ourselves to others, or is fear-based.

For example: I really suck. Everyone else in the business is: better than me; younger than me; older than me; more talented than me; more good-looking than me; more experienced than me; doesn’t have to work at it as hard as I do; is better at networking and knows more important people; lives in a city that is more conducive to success than where I live; had a better childhood; isn’t married; is married; doesn’t have kids; has kids, etc.

Just as our conversations to others can be skewed toward the positive if we choose to see the humorous or positive aspects of a situation, our self-talk can be harmful and negative if we choose to focus on the negative potential of any situation.

Engaging in a negative conversation of any kind, whether it is to someone is or to yourself is potentially harmful to you from an actual physical and biochemical standpoint as well as a psychological one.

Thoughts can generate chemical reactions in the body that can be harmful or healthy, depending on the thoughts we choose. Every time you have a thought, your brain releases chemicals.

Some of those chemicals can make us feel bad, are toxic to the body, and activate the deep limbic system, creating tense muscles, rapid heartbeat, etc. Positive and happy thoughts have a beneficial effect on the body.

Thoughts will tend to happen randomly unless we gain control over them. You can train your thoughts and reactions to be positive or negative. Retraining thought patterns that have been in place for a lifetime is not easy, but it can be done.

This requires awareness and constant vigilance.

Anyone who is interested in entering the music business should know that it is a very competitive environment, filled with lots of rejection. You have to have a very strong psyche to be able to handle all that rejection without letting it affect your core self-esteem.

If you grew up in a family where you got a lot of positive reinforcement and affirmation of your worth as a human, you would have a much stronger platform from which to operate.

If, like many people, you were not so lucky and you were surrounded by family members who were not so adept at reinforcing your self-image, you probably have some work to do on yourself.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing; usually, the incredible amount of drive and determination that is needed to succeed in the arts comes from the need to overcome some kind of early dysfunction.

The arts are full of people who have overcome very challenging early life experiences!

Negative self-talk can be challenged and changed. You change a negative thought by first becoming aware of it, then by challenging it, and finally by changing it and replacing it with something better.

The first step, of course, is to be aware of the thoughts in the first place. The next time you start to feel angry, depressed, or worried, try to remember the thought that brought that feeling on. All feelings were initial thoughts.

If you are serious about creating new behaviors, start by carrying a small notepad around and write down the bothersome thoughts as they occur. This will increase your awareness of how many of these kinds of thoughts occur in a day.

It’s probably a lot!

The next step is to begin to challenge your negative self-talk. Many times negative thinking and self-talk is not rooted in reality and can be exaggerated, if not completely erroneous.

When you challenge your negative assumptions, you bring a much-needed dose of reality to the situation.

According to Dr. Daniel Amen, a leading behavioral therapist, there are four ways you can challenge your negative thoughts and self-talk:

Do a reality test. Ask yourself:

     • What is the actual evidence for and against my thought or opinion?

     • Are my thoughts based on actual fact, or are they my negative interpretation of an event?

     • Am I jumping to conclusions without investigating the facts?

     • What steps can I take to find out if my thoughts are based in reality or just something I made up? Look for alternative explanations.

Ask yourself:

     • Are there any other ways I could look at this situation?

     • Are there other possible interpretations of what seem to be facts?

     • If I were to interpret this from a positive perspective, how would I perceive the situation?

Put it in perspective-look at the big picture.

Ask yourself:

     • Is this situation that bad? Compared to what?

     • What is the absolute worst thing that could happen from this? How likely is it?

     • What is the best thing that could potentially come from this?

     • In reality, what will most likely happen from this?

     • What good thing can I discover from this situation?

     • In five or ten years’ time, will this even matter?

Instead of allowing your self-talk to focus on the extreme negative ramifications of an event, putting things in their proper perspective and even focusing on the potentially positive things to be gained from a situation (or even using a humorous approach to it) can work wonders.

Be goal oriented. Ask yourself:

     • Is thinking this way going to help me achieve my goals?

     • What action can I take that will help me solve the problem?

     • What can I learn from this situation that will help me do better next time around?

The last step is to replace each negative thought with a positive thought that counteracts it. If your current way of thinking does not make you feel good and does not help you get what you want out of life, it is self-defeating. You can replace self-defeating and negative self-talk with more positive and self-affirming thoughts that are more likely to help you achieve positive outcome from any negative situation.

Dr. Daniel Amen calls the Automatic Negative Thoughts we repetitively think ANTS.

There are nine kinds of ANTS that cause you to believe a situation is worse than it is:

     • Always or Never Thinking: I always mess up at auditions. I never get the gigs I want. No one is ever going to like my music. Everyone in this business always takes advantage of me.

     • Focusing on the Negative: Two people left negative comments on my YouTube video. I must be terrible (ignoring the 20 positive comments that were left). I saw a couple leaving in the middle of my show. They must have hated me (ignoring the room full of people who stayed and applauded).

     • Fortune Telling (predicting the worst possible outcome to a situation instead of the best): I just know that this manager is never going to return my call. Even if I enter this songwriting contest, it will be a waste of time, because it's probably rigged.

     • Mind Reading (assuming you know what someone else is thinking): I can tell that guy doesn’t like me by the way he is looking at me. Those two people in the audience were talking all through my set. They must hate my music.

     • Thinking With Your Feelings: I feel like a failure. I feel stupid. I feel like I will never be successful at music.

     • Shoulda-Woulda-Coulda I should have spent my day off writing songs. I would have been successful if I didn’t have to work for a living. I could have gotten a standing ovation if the sound man was doing his job with the mix.

     • Negative Labeling That agent is an arrogant jerk. That singer is talentless. I am talentless.

     • Personalization- putting a personal interpretation on something that has nothing to do with you: She didn’t smile at me. That must mean she is mad at me. He didn’t return my call. He must think I am worthless. My record is not selling well. It must be because of something about me.

     • Blame- blaming something or someone else for the problems in your life makes you a victim: It wasn’t my fault that you..... it wouldn’t have happened if only they had.... How was I supposed to know that.... If they had done their job better....

If you write down your ANTS and counteract them by challenging them and talking back to them, you can retrain your mind to engage in healthy and success-promoting positive self-talk instead of self-defeating negative self-talk.

Positive Self Talk can make all the difference in your life- and your career!

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