By Royane Real

Author of:  “Your Guide to Making Friendly Conversation”

Do you criticize yourself harshly because you are poor at making conversation?

Many people who are shy and awkward when making conversation with others, make their problems much worse because they severely criticize themselves for being conversation failures.  Unfortunately, when they criticize themselves, they become even more nervous and tongue tied when making conversation with other people.

If this happens to you, how can you improve your conversation confidence?  How do you develop a more positive way of thinking so that your confidence and your conversation performance will improve?

There are several different ways to become more supportive of yourself.  You may benefit from using more than one method.

First, you need to listen to what you are actually saying when you criticize yourself. 

Write down all the negative things that you are saying in your mind.

Then, start to counteract the negative messages you are sending to yourself by challenging your negative beliefs and replacing them with more logical statements.

Here’s an example. Suppose that while you were having a conversation with somebody, you just said mentally to yourself, “I’m such a loser. I never say anything right. Every thing I say sounds so stupid. These people must all think I’m an idiot. No wonder no one ever likes me.”

These are certainly very negative statements to use on yourself.  Do these negative thoughts help you to perform better in the future? Will they give you the confidence you need to relax and enjoy talking with other people? No they won’t!

And they are not even realistic statements. They are not based on real facts. They are just very negative, automatic statements that have become a habit for you.  You must change this negative way of thinking and start to stand up for yourself. 

Here’s an example you can use to think more positively:

"I just noticed that I’m automatically saying all those negative things to myself again. I called myself an idiot over and over again. But am I really an idiot? That’s just name calling.

“I’m not really an idiot. I’m actually smart in a lot of ways. Do I really say stupid things all the time? I probably say stupid things once in a while, but not any more often than everybody else does. I don’t know whether other people think I’m an idiot or not. I’m not really a mind reader.

“And I guess if some people sometimes think I sometimes say stupid things, it’s unfortunate, but it’s not really the end of the world."

"When I tell myself that nobody could like me, once again I'm making negative statements where I exaggerate and think that I really know what other people are thinking. I don't know for sure whether all other people like me or not. It’s more logical to think that some people like me and some people don’t. All I can do is to try to be myself."

These kinds of statements will challenge your negative thinking, which has become so automatic.  If you make it a new habit to be positive and supportive of yourself instead of being negative, you will quickly gain confidence in all areas of your life.

Whenever you find that you put yourself down for making conversational errors, just stop!  Notice the negative messages you are sending yourself, and substitute positive messages instead.

If you make an effort to be positive about yourself in a logical way, you will start to feel much more confident and much more comfortable whenever you are making conversation with other people.

This article was written by conversation expert Royane Real.

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