Inform Yourself

My good friend Jay Niblick, founder of Innermetrix International, recently completed a study called The Genius Project. His study became the basis for his latest book, What’s Your Genius? I have worked with Jay for many years assisting organizations and individuals achieve a higher level of performance.

Cognitive scripts: the subconscious “self-talk” that we generate the themes or schemata we habitually apply to ourselves.

A cognitive script is the psychological term given to any messages we tell ourselves, about ourselves, all day long. These scripts can be described as tapes that we play repeatedly in our heads – those things we tell ourselves over and over again, often without conscious awareness. These scripts can influence our emotions and our behavior. They can also be positive or negative, and support our beliefs about ourselves, or create self-limiting beliefs and self-doubt. Some examples of cognitive scripts might include:
“I am a failure”, “I can’t do anything right”, “I will overcome any obstacle and I always do well on tests”. These messages are built from our experiences in life and eventually, through repeating these messages (scripts) enough times, they can become embedded in our subconscious and habitual enough that they develop their own power and are repeated even without justification from our environment anymore. People who suffer from a lack of self-belief often suffer, in actuality, from the problem of negative cognitive scripts. Regardless of why the scripts were developed, they have become habitual and now repeat frequently enough that they influence our reality and outcomes.

The good news is that cognitive scripts can be changed. Though you cannot stop the habit of playing any scripts in your head, you can replace the script that is played. One of the best ways to do this is simply through repetition or positive affirmation statements. Regardless of the fun that is poked at such “therapy” it actually does work. There are lots of examples throughout history of things once thought ineffective eventually turning out to actually work. In most cases it has had less to do with the thing in question not being effective, and more to do with our understanding not being advanced enough to actually understand why it is effective. The medical world offers up two of the easiest examples of things long practiced but only recently understood and approved.

Positive affirmations are another example of something practiced throughout the history of mankind, but because science has not formerly understood the science behind it, it has been much maligned in popular culture. Such work has been the fodder of many a comedian, and the majority of scientists have tended to view affirmations as a fanciful but ineffective way to pacify someone’s need to feel like they have some control over something they really don’t. Recent scientific advances, however, say that we actually do have more control than perhaps they once thought.

Modern day treatments like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) provide a means to replace irrational or negative scripts with rational or positive ones. CBT is practiced all over the world by the majority of clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, and it has been proven to be an effective tool in helping to change habitual opinions or beliefs. This serves as a good example that repetitive thinking activities are an effective way to replace old scripts with new ones.

Habits are either the best of servants or the worst of masters. ~ N. Emmons

When we talk about your level of self-belief, we’re talking about how you see yourself (i.e., what do you say in your mind about yourself). It is unlikely that you give it much thought, but a significant influence over how you feel about yourself is due to the cognitive scripts you play in your mind. To develop your self-belief you have to change these scripts. As so many of us have heard, you can’t get rid of a habit, you can only replace with it with another one. Practice replacing any negative scripts you have with positive ones. This exercise will be an ongoing part of your personal development in maintaining a positive self-belief.