How to Practice Positive Self-Talk as a Teenager

As a teenager, it can be difficult to stay positive and maintain a healthy outlook on life. Negative self-talk can be a major obstacle to achieving your goals and feeling good about yourself. Fortunately, there are ways to practice positive self-talk and make it a habit. The first step is to focus on how you want things to be.

Instead of dwelling on the negative, choose your words carefully and express your self-talk statements in the present tense, even if you don't quite believe them yet. This will help you to challenge the negative or useless aspects of your thinking and respond to situations in a more useful way. You can also practice noticing your own negative self-talk as it happens and consciously choose to think about the situation in a more realistic and helpful way. This can help you to recognize how distorted some of your previous thoughts were before. To get started, try making a free list of 101 positive thinking statements. It's also important to remember that positive self-talk is not about denying or ignoring negative feelings or experiences.

Instead, it's about recognizing them and then reframing them in a more constructive way. For example, instead of telling yourself “I'm so stupid” when you make a mistake, try saying “I made a mistake, but I'm still capable of learning from it”.Finally, practice self-compassion. Be kind to yourself and recognize that everyone makes mistakes. Don't be too hard on yourself when things don't go as planned.

Instead, focus on what you can learn from the experience and how you can move forward.