Flo Stanton, South Campus nurse, promotes constructive thinking and behavior, by teaching others to practice positive self-talk.

In Positive Self-Talk last week, Stanton said all people have their own perceptions of themselves and look at themselves in a certain way.

"Self talk is the things that you say to yourself or think about yourself on an everyday basis," she said.

"Negative self talk increases stress, and stress adds more stress leading to negative stress that can be harmful to the body," she said.

Many people do not know that negative talk or thinking can have such effects on the mind, body and soul.

"Self talk comes from your childhood experiences," she said.

People surrounded by negativity during their childhood are more prone to having a negative self talk than a positive one. However, Stanton said, it is still possible to develop a positive self talk over a negative one.

"Positive self-talk can be developed by using more uppers than downers in one's everyday vocabulary," she said.

"Downers include words such as never, can't, not able to, too hard, too old, etc.

"Most of all, avoid the word should because most of the time, it is inappropriate and a big put down," she said.

Uppers are words such as can, will, need to and, what Stanton described as the biggest of all, just do it.

"When you're looking at expectations, you better know if it is realistic or unrealistic because if it is unrealistic, you are setting yourself up for failure," she said.