I’ve discovered not only in my coaching but through life in general that people often engage in negative self-talk. “I’m always X.” “I struggle with Y.” “I can’t do Z.” They spend a lot of mental energy rehearsing the wrong stuff, embedding it even more deeply into their lives.
If you want to take steps to change and get unstuck, one of the first things that needs to go is the negative self-talk. We need to start replacing those entrenched thoughts with correct ones: “I’m a child of God.” “I’m valued and loved.” “I have gifts to contribute.”
Romans 12:2 talks about reprogramming our self-talk around God’s perspective: to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Consider the specific type of negative self-talk you engage in. Biblical truth is very often the direct opposite of what we are saying to ourselves.
Sometimes we simply repeat messages that others have told us: “I’m worthless. I’ll never amount to much.” The biblical truth is quite different– you’re valuable in God’s sight, created by him for a specific purpose: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).
Find those things that are uniquely for you, and replace the wrong thinking with the right thinking. By replacing falsehood with truth, you can begin to imagine and rehearse a new– more accurate– reality. That is how we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. Scripture allows us a proper perspective on ourselves: sinners saved by God’s grace. Not perfect, but loved, accepted, and valuable.