I have written a lot about the power of our thoughts andpositive thinking, so it came as a surprise to me to come acrossthis article. New researchsuggests that the common prescriptive of positive self-talk may not be positive for all people, after all; in fact, it might even be dangerous to some. The people most in need of encouragement and self-coaching are those with low self-esteem; however, such positive affirmations may be outside the realm of what they find to be believable. Thus, these ideas can be immediately dismissed or the individual may immediately internally contradict such statements. If you found Stuart Smalley to be ridiculous, you will have a hard time believing yourself saying such things.

This research utilized Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale to divide participants into a high-esteem and a low-esteem group. Participants were then asked to write down any thoughts and feelings they had during a four-minute period; every fifteen minutes throughout this period, a doorbell would ring prompting half of each group (high-esteem and low-esteem) to tell themselves “I am a lovable person.”

After this exercise, participants completed two questionnaires designed to assess mood and two questionnaires designed to assess current self-esteem. The researchers discovered that the positive statements increased the differences between the two groups....read more about the results of this research and how it is effecting my practice at Diets in Review...