Talking, Acting & Thinking Positively w/ Dr. Alessandra Wall

Show Notes

Guest Hero: Dr. Alessandra Wall, Ph.D. - Licensed Clinical Psychologist at Life in Focus Therapy

When negative events or mistakes happen, positive self-talk simply seeks to bring the positive out of the negative to help you do better, go further, or keep moving forward. The practice of positive self-talk is often the process that allows you to discover the hidden optimism, hope, and joy in any given situation. Along with a few other little added benefits like altering the expression of genes, strengthening areas in our frontal lobes and promoting the brain’s cognitive functioning.

A few episodes ago, we were talking about To Do Lists (find that at www.workplacehero.me/todo) and I said: “It might not seem like much, but self-talk is a really important part of our self-esteem and confidence. By working on getting more positive self-talk, you’re more likely to get things done and feel more in control of stuff that’s going on in your life.”

After that episode came out, I received three messages from listeners wanting to know more about “positive self talk” and how they can use it in the work and life.

One fellow was having trouble seeing the positive side of some major setbacks at work and felt stuck in an extremely negative loop in his head. A young woman wrote in saying that she gets stressed out way too easily and thought that positive self talk could help her. Another woman wrote in saying that she manages a large team and was wondering how she could use positive language as a motivator.

Well, I wrote back to all three of those people and told then that I would put it on the list. Well, today is when I put my money where my mouth is. Yup, today is all about language. And I don’t mean english versus Español versus Française. I mean both the positive and the negative kind of language we use on ourselves and our coworkers and how it affects all of us.

Links: Common Thought Distortions (pdf) Life in Focus (our Guest Hero's website) Using Positive Language (article by Robert Bacal) Word Can Change Your Brain (book by Andrew Newberg, M.D., and Mark Robert Waldman) How To Turn 11 Everyday Phrases from Negative to Positive (article by Elana Goldberg)

What is Workplace Hero?

The aim of this podcast is for me to arm you, my amazing workplace-casual army, with the weapons needed to combat the potential and perhaps inherent downsides of our chosen lifestyle. Most of us spend at least 40 hours per week at our place of work (47.7 hours is the actual average - even if we only get paid for 37.5 hours). We put time and effort into what our home looks like. We put research into the car we buy or the clothes we wear. Why wouldn’t we put at least that much effort into how we approach our workspace? This podcast will help you optimize, hone and perfect your office habitat so you can truly be a Workplace Hero.