Do you ever pay attention to the thoughts inside your mind? And more importantly do you ever notice the way in which you talk to yourself?

We all pay a lot of attention to the way we communicate with the outside world but we often neglect to improve the way we communicate with ourselves.

When it comes to motivating yourself to be a better person, to do better at work or to create a happier family life you need to understand the importance of taking control of your self talk.

Here are three tips you can use right away to motivate yourself:

1. Talk to yourself the way you talk to someone you love

Be honest! Is it true you sometimes insult yourself, curse yourself and say horrible things about your abilities?

If you spoke like this regularly to someone you care about they would leave and never talk to you again. There is no excuse for treating yourself so badly.

Talk to yourself the way you would talk to someone you deeply love. Be respectful, patient and understanding. Be slow to anger, quick to praise and grateful for the opportunity to listen.

Be on your best behavior when you talk to yourself and you will find that you treat other people better as well. This in turn will cause people to respond more positively to whatever you say. These very people will be more inclined to help you get what you want.

In an indirect way your communication with the outside world will improve.

2. Pump up the volume

Very often we go through our day with an internal dialogue buzzing away in the background. We mutter to ourselves about what we need to do without feeling particularly inspired to do anything other than what we have to do.

This is not an effective strategy for self motivation!

What you need to do instead is to turn up the volume, inject some passion into your words and talk to yourself with enthusiasm. You would not have much luck motivating someone else to take action without putting some energy into your words. You need to do the same to motivate yourself.

The next time you want to motivate yourself to do something talk to yourself the same way you would if someone was standing before you waiting to be inspired.

Speak loudly with passion and excitement either aloud or to yourself inside your head. The more energy you put into it the easier it will be to light the fire inside you that sparks you into action.

3. Know how to feel good when you are having a tough day

No matter how focused, positive and hard working you are there will still be days when nothing seems to go your way. It is on days like this that you must take charge of your brain and take control of your self talk.

You need a back catalogue of memories you can replay to make yourself feel good. Music does it for me. I have so many songs I love to hear that I just pick one out and listen to it in my mind.

In a moment I can listen to sounds that make me feel fantastic simply by choosing to. For best results imagine you have a volume control with bass and treble. Make the music sound rich, loud and resonant.

A friend of mine has such a great memory that he will listen to an entire CD in his mind. How about that for a quick and easy way to feel good whenever you are having a tough day?

One final way to use this tip. Replay happy memories of people telling you how much they value and appreciate you. Hear them saying what a difference you are making and soak up those wonderful feelings of appreciation.

It really is your choice as to how you run your brain. Choose to feel great and your communication with yourself and the outside world will become remarkable. Your motivation will soar and getting more done each day will just get easier and easier with eager people lining up to help you.