In a world where a sudden attack by another person can make you feel down, you certainly don’t need any other reasons to feel bad, and much less so if it comes from your own self-talk!

Positive thinking is very important for maintaining your mental health in situations of extreme stress. In the nursing trade, learning to encourage and motivate yourself is essential for ensuring quality service when everything is going against you. When the worst happens and you hit rock-bottom, there are only a handful of things that can help you get out of that rut, most of which rely on the help of another person. However, when a helping hand is not available, it comes down to you to perk up, and get yourself out of that hole; and one of these ways is through positive thinking.

In the nursing trade, it’s very difficult to emphasize and practice positive self-talk. There’s something about being in contact with death and disease on a daily basis that prevents us from seeing the glass “half-full.” You could say that, in a way, nurses are cautious realists and hopeless pessimists. This stance varies according to the experiences of each professional: a nurse working her first year in a pediatrician’s private practice will hardly go through the same events that another nurse working for the last 10 years in the NICU of a public hospital has. The constant contact with death is enough to make oneself become hopeless in the face of any situation, to the point where you may come to expect the worse from something like the common cold.

However, our private outlook on the world can be heavily altered by our self-talk.

Are you familiar with the saying that states that someone who lies too much may suddenly begin to believe their own lies? The same happens with self-talk. While this can be valuable while working long shifts in stressful departments, self-talk is also a tool that must be used with caution. Mainly because, when a nurse practices unhealthy self-talk, they become careless when under enough stress.

Positive thinking and self-talk are not about reassuring ourselves in the face of failure or certain danger without actually doing something about it. Positive thinking is a way of life that affects how we approach certain obstacles, especially those that are unpleasant to experience. Those who practice this technique are able to function properly, even in the most stressful situations, and find solutions. In a sense, positive thinking is about shifting this cautious realism into a more appropriate mindset; those who practice this approach always think the best is going to happen, not the worst, and constantly work to achieve this outcome.

In many cases, especially in those who are natural pessimists, the shift from this mindset to a more positive approach starts with self-talk; it starts with convincing our own mind that positive things are going to happen if we take appropriate actions. In the cases where the worst happens, it allows us to understand why they happened, and that we did our best to prevent it, even though it might not have been enough (which may or may not be our responsibility).

Before we shift our outlook to a more positive one, it’s important that we learn to identify the negative self-speech that perpetuates pessimism in our lives. For some people, this may come from something as simple as ignoring compliments and focusing only at the task at hand (which always keep piling up, no matter what they do). Instead of spending some time thinking about the compliments they received, the pessimists only focus on getting the job done, without regard for anything else. While this mindset is perfect for those who want to do their best at the job, it will, at some point or another, take its toll on their mental wellbeing.

Positive self-talk is about helping your mind to drop its bad thoughts to make room for a good and healthy mindset, without losing sight of the task at hand. Those who practice these techniques are able to function better, even with conflict and stress.