Words are incredibly powerful, they have the ability to inspire, to transport us to other times and places, to cause hurt or fear, to break hearts or make hearts smile. The words you choose to use with yourself and with others can make an incredible difference to your mood, attitude and wellbeing.

Self-talk is that little voice in our heads that tells us from time to time that we are 'not good enough', that 'it's too hard', or that we 'cannot do' something, it probably says some positive things too, but we usually choose to only hear the negative. What impact do you think it has on your mental, emotional and physical wellbeing to have a 24-hour a day negative commentary running through your head? You'll never get that little voice to be quiet, but you can take control of what it is focusing on, which messages you choose to pay attention to and which you choose to drown out.

Begin by being aware of your self-talk and stop yourself whenever you are being negative. Reward yourself when you recognise negative self-talk, it is an opportunity to correct it, don't further punish yourself with more negative self-talk! Replace negative scripts such as 'I can't do this' with 'I'm learning how to do this' or 'I am determined to become good at this' or simply 'I know I can do this'. You'll probably be surprised by just how much negativity you're feeding yourself every day, but overtime, as you are diligent in catching and correcting yourself, the negative self-talk will become less and less.

We have a rule in our business that we only use positive words, and eliminate negatives especially double negatives. Some of my pet hates are 'no worries', 'no problem', 'no hassles' and so on. When you use these phrases your subconscious focus is on the 'worries', 'problems' or 'hassles' part of the response. Replacing these with new responses such as 'it's easy', 'it's my pleasure' or 'I'd love to' results in an entirely different focus and energy. When we first started to say 'it's easy' instead of 'no worries' we noticed two big changes. First, we noticed a change in other people's response to us, they were delighted by our can-do attitude, at how accommodating we were and how pleasant it was to deal with us - we hadn't changed anything about how we were interacting or delivering our services, the only thing that had changed was our language. The second change we noticed was in ourselves, when we said 'it's easy' our attitude and approach came from a belief that it is easy, and so it felt easy and enjoyable.

Next time you're feeling stressed and overloaded, instead of using inflammatory language such as 'I'm so stressed I can't see straight', or I'm stressed out of my brain', or 'I feel like I'm drowning' stop yourself and create some new language around what's going on, such as 'I have all the time and energy I need to finish this work', or 'this is a challenging and exciting time', or 'I know I'll get through this, I always do'.

Listen to yourself and enlist the support of the people in your team to help identify and replace each other's negative word habits with positive and empowering ones. Changing what you say and hear can change your experience of life.

Start right now, first tell yourself something positive about you and then find a colleague or friend and make their heart smile by using some kind words - just because you can.