It’s time that you stopped sabotaging your own best efforts with negative self-talk.

There are plenty of articles and stories out there that will inform you about the exceptional habits or motivational mantras of individuals who have achieved success in their chosen field.

As inspirational as those articles can be, however, they really only tell about half of the story. Interesting, right?

Instead of being inspired, many will come away with sentiments of dejection and defeat.

That’s known as negative self-talk and we’re all guilty of it from time to time.

Global Resources LLC consultants assert that there are at least four different types of negative self-talk: filtering, personalizing, catastrophizing and polarizing.

Let’s take a look at some of the self-defeating things that we say to ourselves. In recognizing these, let’s make a conscious effort to stop them right away.

“This person is always doing this to me…”

While you may not realize it, this is actually two forms of negative self-talk in one sentence. On one end, it’s filtering because the speaker has filtered out anything positive about their situation and heightened only the negative. It’s also polarizing, in that the person sees only bad or good (bad, in this case). There is literally no middle ground in this sentence.

“Great, now my whole day is ruined…”

Catastrophizing is when someone takes one negative situation and exaggerates its effects on the bigger picture. It could be something as little as getting your coffee order wrong, and yet you’ll let it bring you down to the point where the expression actually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“He/she does it just to upset me…”

A personalizing statement means that you’re making something all about yourself (or another specific person) even when that’s really not the case. Keep in mind that most people you encounter really don’t have the time to go out of their way to target you.

“I totally suck at this…”

Sure, you will experience difficulties at times. Having said that, you do yourself no favors when you characterize your situation as something that you totally suck at.

“I’m always in trouble…”

This one is actually laughable. No one is ever “always” in trouble, but having that frame of mind means you will act like it. As a result, this may actually mark you as the type of trouble that no one wants to be around.