Three Statements to Say to Yourself that Can Change Your Life
The things we say to ourselves have more effect than we think
What if every day when you wake up you tell yourself that you are not good enough, how are you going to feel? What we say to ourselves matters, what we acknowledge of ourselves matters. I know this because for years I never called myself a writer, and for years I floundered as a writer, the funny thing is though the moment I started to call myself a writer, I suddenly started to become successful in the world of writing.
Here are three statements that I say to myself each morning that changed my life for the better.
This is who I am and I want this
Imagine that you aspire to be a writer and you want a book published, but you don’t even admit to yourself that you are a writer and that you want a book published. Do you think you will ever succeed as a writer and get a book published?
What we think ourselves to be and what we admit to ourselves that we want profoundly impacts upon our chances of getting what we want from life. For example, if each morning a person says to themselves that I am a writer and I want to have a book published, immediately they boost their chances of achieving both goals. The consistency principle in psychology is the reason. It’s well known that once we commit to something, we act consistently with that commitment.
So, if a person says to themselves that they are a writer and that they want a book published, immediately their mind will become focused completely and entirely on becoming a writer who has a book published. However, if they don’t make this statement then they are committing themselves to not being a writer and not having a book published. The reason, we act consistently with what we acknowledge.
Basically, if we don’t acknowledge even to ourselves who we are and what we want we will never be who we are and get what we want. This does not just have to be about writing goals, for example, a person could say that I am single and I want a relationship. They could say I am unhappy and I want to be happy.
In both examples the first half of the statement acknowledges a reality, and the second half acknowledges what they want to change about that reality. A person is single but they don’t want to be. A person is unhappy but they don’t want to be. A person is a writer but they want to be a published author.
Acknowledging your reality and what you want will help you accept who you are and what you want, and people who do that put themselves in a great position to get what they want. This is why saying this is who I am and this is what I want on a daily basis can have such a profound effect on your life, because it gives you the frame of mind to get what you want from life.
I will be patient, I will work hard, I will be consistent
When we are young, we tend to think that life is a sprint — I was very guilty of this — we want the end goal as fast as possible but don’t realise that our desire to get there as fast as possible is likely going to stop us from getting there at all.
The reality is everything in life takes time. Love takes time, you can connect with a person at first sight, you truly can have an amazing connection with a person the first time you meet them, but it is not love. It is a strong foundation for love. But it is not love. Love takes time, some even believe that it takes between seven and ten years to truly get to know a person well enough to be able to claim that you truly love them, mainly because it takes that long to truly get to know a person. Everything in life takes time.
This does not just count for human connections, it counts for everything. For example, Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers highlighted that it takes 10,000 hours of practice for any person to become world-class at anything.
That is a lot of practice time. It is also why a lot of people never achieve any form of success, people start practising but as time goes by they drop out left right and centre, meaning very few people ever get to the ten thousand hours of practice required to reach world-class level.
For example, many people want to write a book and become published authors, and they begin by writing a book that is rubbish. Inevitably. Everyone’s first book is always rubbish because they haven’t got enough writing experience for it to be good. But because it is rubbish and doesn’t take off, they give up.
A relationship, a person really likes who they are with but suddenly it seems hard work remaining in the relationship and so they drop out, the next relationship they enter the same thing happens, the same again with the next. They then wonder why they can’t succeed at having a successful relationship.
Success is not a sprint, it’s a battle of endurance, one by one everybody around you will drop out but if you keep being patient, if you keep working hard, if you keep being consistent, in the end you will be the one who succeeds simply because you will be the last one standing.
That’s why telling yourself every day to be patient, to keep working hard, and to keep being consistent is such a powerful tool. Because it reminds you what the true key to success is. Patience, hard work, and consistency.
Who can I meet today
Before I was injured, I used to play golf and I frequently played with a guy who had built up a multi-million-pound business. He always told me that the key to success was asking yourself this question every single day: who can I meet today.
He frequently told me that the reason he had built up his business was not that he was anything special himself, it was because he spent all this time meeting people who had the power to give him opportunities.
“Opportunities, opportunities, opportunities, David,” he would constantly tell me. “You don’t earn opportunities by just working hard, hard work alone is worthless, you earn opportunities by persuading people you are worthy of being given them. But they can’t give you them if you don’t meet them. If you don’t connect with them. If you don’t give them a reason to like you. A reason to make them want to give you an opportunity.”
“Literally, David,” he continued, “a person could write the greatest book ever written, but if they don’t have anybody willing to help them sell that book, then the book may as well not have been written. A person could be a genius, they could have the power within them to cure every disease known to man, but if nobody is willing to give them the opportunity to cure every disease known to man by helping them realise their potential then their genius is worthless.”
What he was telling me in his own way was that opportunities come from other people, and nobody can succeed at anything without other people giving them the opportunity to. That’s why asking yourself every day, who can I meet today, is the most important question to ask, because only by asking that question does everything else that you do have a chance of providing you with the outcome you are seeking.
Final words
Every day, if you say to yourself, this is who I am and I want this. In my efforts to get this, I’m going to be patient, I’m going to work hard, and I’m going to be consistent. Now who can I meet today. If you say this to yourself every day, you will give yourself the best chance possible of finding the mindset you need to achieve whatever it is you want to achieve.
I know this because it worked for me, the moment this became my mindset everything changed for the better. Maybe it can do the same for you.
That’s all from me, thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy the following:
Seven Amazingly Brilliant Motivational Speeches That Teach the Key to Success
Three Brilliant Writing Techniques to Improve Your Life and Relationships
The 15 Greatest Human Innovations in All of History
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