What can we do to maintain and improve our emotional health during these uncertain times?

Something I learned as a young student with little confidence is that I can change my thoughts by changing my language.

Of prime importance is how you communicate with yourself. What do you tell yourself in your thoughts and when speaking out loud? A powerful exercise that you can begin practicing right now is transformative language. Test it during this COVID-19 pandemic.

• Become aware of the messages you are feeding to yourself. What do you say to yourself? Are your words positive? Become aware of what you tell yourself. In other words when something happens become conscious of your words. Listen to your thoughts. For instance, do you tell yourself, “I don’t feel well” or “Chances are I will catch the virus”? What you are telling your subconscious is that you are sick and you will have the virus; and your subconscious will believe it. So, what happens? Little by little your brain begins to believe that you will get sick so there’s no reason for it to help you feel well.
• As soon as you catch yourself with a negative thought, change it to a positive. Using the example above, tell yourself, “I feel good. I am healthy, happy and well”. If you are able, say this out loud with a smile. Did I hear you say, “But that’s a lie. I don’t feel healthy, happy and well”. It’s okay. You do not have to believe it. Your subconscious believes what you tell it, whether or not you believe it. What is important is too reword anything that you are saying that is not positive so that it becomes positive as in the example above. Even saying something such as “Oh I wish I could do that”, is not positive; because what you are saying is, “I cannot do that”. In this case you might simply tell yourself, “I can do anything I wish”. Test this.
• Use this exercise consciously over the next weeks and see what happens. Using positive language; having a positive attitude is a key to your emotional health. I encourage you to use this exercise even if you are a positive person, because you may find your thoughts and language have changed during this pandemic.

I would love to hear your experiences with this exercise and the influence it has on your emotional health and your age esteem.

Bonnie Fatio