Portable Mom

A few years ago I purchased a small, plastic box with six pink buttons, called a Portable Mom. When you push the buttons a nagging voice says things like: “You’re going to put somebody’s eye out with that thing.” “The answer is no!” “It’s broken, are you happy now?”

I use my Portable Mom in speeches and seminars to illustrate negative self-talk. We all have an inner, portable mom that puts us down when our buttons are punched by setbacks, frustrations or lost sales.

The key to success is to minimize the impact of Portable Mom by shutting it down as much as possible.

But sometimes Portable Moms are hard to shut up! A few months ago I spoke for the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists convention in New Orleans. I took a packed shuttle van from the airport to my downtown hotel. As the van pulled away from the curb I heard a sarcastic voice in the rear of the shuttle say: “It’s broken! Are you happy now?” My Portable Mom was broadcasting negative sentences from my suitcase – nonstop!

I stared forward, hoping that the barrage of negativity would stop. It didn’t! I experienced an inner panic attack as my imagination painted vivid images of me and my complaining suitcase being thrown off the bus. I asked myself: “Should I confess when people begin to ask about the disembodied voice showering us all with incessant disapproval?” They didn’t. For 20 minutes no one even appeared to notice the put-downs. (Maybe they thought it was their own inner misfortune-teller.)

As the van drove away I pondered how we, like the people in the shuttle, often fail to challenge or even question the mental voices that trample our self-esteem. Greenville Kleiser said: “When a thought that is in any way detrimental to your best progress arises in your mind, direct your mind at once to some desirable subject and thus drive out the intruder by substitution.”

When left on automatic pilot our minds tend toward negatives. To avoid the turmoil of mental self-deprecation, we must take conscious control of our thinking. Martin Luther said: “A thought is like a bird. You can’t stop it from flying across your mind, but you don’t have to let it build a nest there.”

Three principles for dealing with your inner misfortune-teller are: 1) Don’t think anything about yourself that you wouldn’t allow another person to say to you. 2) Every time you mentally put yourself down, stop and substitute a sincere self-compliment. 3) Frequently repeat the following quotation from Paul of Tarsus: “I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself.”

Like a hot air balloon, you will soar toward success when you drop the weights of negative self-talk. Shakespeare summed it up when he said: “Lay aside life-harming heaviness and entertain a cheerful disposition.”