Let me tell you a quick story. When I was working in the Beer industry (yes I did get lots of samples) I was intrigued by our top ten successful Bar and Hotel owning customers. The majority of them, to put it tactfully, didn’t seem to be particularly sophisticated business people. In other words, they didn’t seem to have had any kind of business training or acquired any qualifications.

I was discussing with my boss one day how these people had become so successful and he said – ‘They don’t know they can’t do it. You and I Alan see the pitfalls, we know about business and we see all the ways we could fail. These people only think about how they’ll succeed.’

As you’ll gather, this was a pretty powerful message for me – these successful business owners were talking to themselves in a much more positive way than less successful people.

Your level of success in terms of your happiness, emotional well-being and anything else you desire is a direct result of how you think and how you talk to yourself.

Listen to the self-talk that goes on in your head and ask yourself – ‘Is what I’m saying allowing me to be confident, on top and going for it?’ If so – great! ‘Or is it holding me back and stopping me achieve my goals?’ If this is the case – STOP IT, change the program!

By talking to yourself in a positive manner, you’ll start to feel physically better. Words have an enormous power to create change the chemistry of your body. Your heart rate, blood pressure, muscles, nerves and breathing will all react to the words you say to yourself.

Take a moment to say some words to yourself such as – ‘Holidays, warm sunshine, sandy beaches, swimming, chilled beer, delicious food.’ Are you starting to get good feelings? I hope you are. Maybe words like home, family, children, or Christmas gives you some good feelings. Or how about the word ‘sex?’ I bet that could change the chemistry of your body.

So think about the things you say to yourself and make every statement in the present tense.

Don’t say, for example – ‘I’m going to make a success of this business’ or ‘I’m going to get organised,’ or ‘I’m going to be much more confident.’

Say – ‘I am totally in control of my life and my business. I am totally confident and positive. I’m achieving my goals. I have determination and drive.’

What you’re actually doing here is re-programming your subconscious. If you talk to yourself in a positive way, that’s what your subconscious will focus on.

Top sports people know all this stuff; they know that they need to talk to themselves in a positive way to be successful. Research has proved that the success of the world’s top golfers is determined by 20 per cent physical ability and 80 per cent mental ability. In the day-to-day tasks that we face in our life, we should be no different from sports people.

If you talk to yourself in a negative way; that’s what your subconscious will focus on. If you think illness, you’ll become ill. If you think doom and gloom; that’s what you’ll get. But if you think – health, happiness and success – you’ve got it.

You have the power to re-program your mind, replace your old conditioning, and get more out of life. You do this by thinking and using positive self-talk.

Put this to the test right away; for the next 7 days listen to what you say to yourself and if it’s negative, change it to something more positive and you’ll start to feel better, look better and have much more success.

Let me know what you think (but not if you’ve just had a beer!)