Self-talk How I overcame negative self-talk to be more confident

Self-talk How I overcame negative self-talk to be mora confidentSelf-talk How I overcame negative self-talk to be mora confidentSelf-talk, the words we mutter in ur minds, can have a strong influence over our performance.Ive found that the right attitude, coupled with the right internal dialogue, can make things happen in life. The wrong attitude, however, combined with self-doubting dialogue, can stop you in your tracks and make you want to run home and hide your head.I can recall one professional experience when this welches really clear to me.During a mainboard meeting for a Marine Corps nonprofit, the chairman asked us, What are we not doing to help fund our organizations mission? Can anyone think of anything that we havent considered?Well, I had an idea. Scanning the boardroom, it was clear to me that our board composition could be more diverse. I raised my hand and said to the chairman, I think one of our challenges is the lack of diversity represented on our board. Theres more than enough data to support that diverse boards deliver stronger results - financial and otherwise. This is true in the corporate world, and I cant imagine why it would be different in the nonprofit world.After sharing some facts and figures to support my perspective, I finished up and then sat up in my seat a little bit straighter, proud that Id made my case so strongly.Then I waited for a reply. And waited . . . and waited.That was when my confident pride faded to insecurity. Oh dear God, I thought. What have I done?You could hear crickets. Rarely did this board not have an opinion. I felt insecure over having raised the issue that silenced the room. I then felt embarrassed, like I had either offended someone or that maybe I had tarnished the reputation I had been carefully building.When the meeting adjourned, I didnt engage in polite chitchat with the other members but headed straight to the door, caught a cab, and hightailed it to the airport so I could go home and be alone wi th my self-destructive insecure thoughts.While boarding the plane, I passed our boards general counsel, a very famous attorney - John Dowd, who authored the Dowd Report that led to the suspension of Pete Rose from baseball for life.He asked me to sit next to him, and while I didnt want to, fearing a confrontation, I sat down out of respect. And immediately he jumped into the conversation with, Im glad you brought that point up about diversity. Youre right.He then shared that he was going to talk with the CEO about the diversity of our board, because we might be missing out on some of its key benefits.In those moments, Johns perspective shed some critical light on my self-talk. He made me realize how quickly Id taken the others silence to mean that they were judging me when maybe they were just thinking and reflecting about something theyd never thought about before.I was amazed by how automatically Id conjured the worst-case scenario without even considering a best-case scenario. I realized that I needed to have more confidence in myself and write a new inner dialogue for when Im feeling stressed or pressured, because the current one wasnt helping.Had I not had this random encounter with John, I would have drowned myself in my own miserable self-talk for weeks.John and I spent the next 30to 40minutes talking about our life experiences, diversity, families, and the Marine Corps. He ended up introducing me to General Joseph Dunford then Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, the second-highest-ranking Marine in the organization.After an initial meeting, General Dunford asked for my help in arranging a private luncheon with other Marines and the Commandant of the Marine Corps, whos the CEO-equivalent in the organization, and his executive team. It was a lively, candid, and memorable discussion.My relationship with General Dunford continued as he became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with whom Ive now shared my thoughts, ideas, and research on diversi ty to help promote a military in which everyone - from recruit to active-duty service member to Veteran- recognizes the benefits that diversity can bring to an organization.When I look back on the string of events that allowed me to provide my perspectives on diversity to the highest levels of the military, theres no doubt that confidence has been a part of every step.This Spark quality,which I define in my recent bookSpark,as your belief in your abilities and the feeling that you can rise to the occasion when the pressure is on, inspired me to speak my mind and share my point of view, even though I had mistakenly told myself that it had been received poorly. In fact, speaking up opened the door to greater opportunities.What has sustained me as a Spark is the ability to manage my confidence by substituting positive self-appraisals for those harmful, negative ones. Im not perfect at this - Im still a work in progress - but I lean on this story about John Dowd and General Dunford for confidence boosting all the time.Angie Morgan is a former Captain in the U.S., Marine Corps, co-creator of Lead Star, and co-author of Leading from the Front and SPARK How to Lead Yourself and Others to Greater Success(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt January 2017).