Speaker will promote self-improving
by Paul Branch
reporter

   Flo Stanton, South Campus coordinator of health services, will help students understand how negative thinking can affect their health, temper and emotions Wednesday, March 3, at 6 p.m.
   Positive Self-Talk, one of three discussions for the Women in New Roles Health Forum, will help students to identify and eliminate negative thinking.
   This negative thinking so often brings them down and keeps them from achieving their goals, Stanton said.
   A registered nurse, Stanton originally created this talk for the WINR program to teach students how to stop criticizing themselves and start encouraging themselves in a more positive and healthy way.
   “We are more effective when we talk positively,” she said.
   Stanton hopes students will become aware of the common language they use toward themselves and realize how much better it is to think positively.
   Stanton said people need to approach things more positively, such as saying “I can” rather than “I can’t.” Another really destructive phrase that people use is “I should have” or “could have,” Stanton said.
   “The word should is a negative word,” she said.
   When students say they “should have done this’’ or “should have done that,” Stanton said, they begin to question themselves and start to lose self-confidence and self-esteem.
   The goal is to promote constructive thinking and behavior by saying something positive.
   She said this would happen if people accomplish these three objectives: identify language “uppers vs. downers,” listen for irrational (destructive) thinking and practice positive (constructive) thinking.
   Stanton has been presenting this series for several years, and it has become a regular class course for WINR.
   However, it is not strictly for the women in WINR. She encourages all students to attend the speech in the SSTU Forum Room.
   Other speeches in this series include Balancing Multiple Roles, the first in the series, and Laughing Your Way through Stress, the final talk in this series.