Right from the day, individuals start babbling as a child till the time they are deceased, they are put across this question, “Who are you?”, and an individual’s answer always starts with ‘Name’. However, with the passage of time minor changes occurs to the name, like prefix of the name changes from Master to Mr., Miss to Mrs. , sometimes prefix like Dr., Prof., Eng. etc. gets added to the name. Whatever changes happen to the name, the introduction always starts with the individual’s name, followed by place they live in, school they study and as they grow up their profession, the position in which they are and the company for which they work gets added to the introduction. After all, this is what is taught to them as a child by their parents and teachers, and for all blatant reasons it’s the right thing to do while introducing oneself to rest of the world.
However, as an individual, do we ever pause and ask our self, how pertinent this introduction is that we offer to the rest of the world, to us? Does this define what we think of ourselves in real sense?” And if we dig deep inside our heart, we will most likely get “NO” as the answer.
Now if our name, school, place, profession, the company for which we work don’t define us then, who are we in real sense? We as an individual are much beyond the introduction which we offer to rest of the world.
We are not what the world thinks of us, rather we are our own interpretation of what the world thinks of us. Hence, my definition of “Me” is, my definition of world’s definition of ” Me”.
For instance, Anna, wears a backless floral printed vibrant dress and goes to a banquet. There she meets her dear friend Lucy and asks her how she looks. Replying to which Lucy says,” you look awesome; however, I feel your knee-length shimmer black dress would have been better fit for this occasion”. Anna perceives Lucy’s reply as “I don’t have good dressing sense and I look stupid wearing this backless floral printed vibrant dress for an occasion like this”. As a result of the internal conversation Anna interpreted Lucy’s comment in a way that made her feel underconfident and doubtful about her dressing sense.
While the classic definition of a conversation is, dialogue between different individuals, conversations are not always external. In addition, there is a type of conversation which an individual hold with themselves and that is internal conversation. It’s that nagging voice in an individual’s head that defines and shapes their beliefs in themselves. It also plays a very important role in mental health of an individual. There are two types of internal conversation:
1) Negative self-dialogue: It’s the inner critical talk. This is generally based on the self-belief that got developed at an early age based on how we perceived feedback from the outside world. Examples of such beliefs that leads to negative self-dialogue – I am not worthy of love, I am not good enough, I am a failure etc.,
2) Positive self-dialogue: Its supportive self-dialogue. It overrules the beliefs that can lead to negative self-talk. This is the one factor in building self-confidence.
The chatter inside an individual’s mind happens all the time it’s just that we rarely pay attention to it when we are in a big crowd. Every choice an individual makes, every turn an individual takes is the result of their internal dialogue. Some people can go and talk to strangers effortlessly whereas for some its strenuous. It’s because of what their mind tells them in the given situation. For the folks who can effortlessly go and talk to strangers their mind tells them words of encouragement like, “Oh he seems to be interesting, I think I should go and talk to him, I am capable enough to impress him.” Whereas for the other group, their mind tells them, “He is such a great man, I am not good enough to talk to him, I will look like a fool”.
What an individual says to themselves either lifts them up or tears them down. Thus, to have good sense of oneself -it’s very important to have encouraging conversations with oneself. Therefore, its vital to watch our self-talk, the internal dialogue of what we are telling our self every day, because it’s not what we say out of our mouths that determines our life, It’s what we whisper to our self internally that has the power to determine our life.
— The Millennial