The way we talk to ourselves shapes the way we see ourselves and the world around us, and it's vitally important! Our self-talk the silent force driving our emotions, decisions, and ultimately our success or failure. This is why we decided to bring you the science in an easy to understand post, so that you can transform your life with positive self-talk.
By understanding and mastering it, you can unlock a powerful tool that influences your confidence, well-being, and ability to overcome challenges. Here's why you should take it seriously.
What is Self-talk?
Self-talk refers to the internal dialogue we have with ourselves—thinking and hearing words in our heads without actually speaking them aloud. It’s an interesting concept and something we all do as a fundamental part of life. When we’re thinking, we tend to do it in words, especially when reflecting on past experiences or considering our options. This can be particularly intense when we're dwelling on emotionally charged events that we can’t seem to shake.
What’s especially interesting is the impact that this self-talk can have on us physiologically.
Positive thoughts can lead to positive emotions… like smiling or laughing when recalling something funny. On the other hand, negative thoughts can cause stress, sadness, or even tears when we replay upsetting situations in our heads. For example, how often have you reduced yourself to tears when someone at work may have upset you and you’ve been replaying the situation over and over in your head?
The impact of self-talk goes even deeper – when you transform your life with positive self-talk it can boost your confidence and self-esteem, as well as leading to better overall health and well-being, while negative self-talk can harm both your mental and physical health. So how can we improve our self-talk, and what should we avoid?
Taking Control of Your Thoughts
The first step in improving self-talk is to consciously take control of your thoughts. Initially this may seem difficult if you have been in a habit of responding negatively to a cue or trigger. Over time, your brain will have developed neural pathways as a consequence of prior experiences, and your behaviour will follow those patterns unless you actively work to change them.
You might have heard of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). It says that the way we receive and process information from the outside world determines how we feel and behave.
We receive external stimuli through our senses, and as the information enters our brain, it’s either deleted, generalised, or… distorted . This filtering process is influenced by factors like our attitudes, values, beliefs, memories, and cognitive patterns (called “meta-programs”). As a consequence of this filtering we will build our own internal representation of the world, which affects our emotional ‘state of mind’ and translates into behaviour.
If our internal representation is negative, our self-talk will likely reflect that negativity. However, if we perceive our environment positively, our self-talk will be more optimistic.
This isn’t some kind of pseudoscience, the NLP philosophy, while open to challenge in some respects has some very valid points that are based on neuroscience and has built an extensive following globally.
A Simple Example – The Weather
Take the weather as an example. If it’s sunny and warm, you might think "What a beautiful day! I want to go to the beach with friends," and so you feel uplifted. But if it’s rainy and gloomy, you might think, "Ugh, what a miserable day, I hate this weather," and your mood may sour. But we can re-frame these situations...
Sure, we can enjoy sunny days, but we can also appreciate rainy days for their benefits, appreciating that the rain helps the flora and fauna prosper, the animals can drink and there is a natural balance to the ecology. We can also enjoy putting on the fire and getting cosy, eating wholesome food and enjoying activities that are correlated to this type of weather. We can also buy clothes that enable us to enjoy the wet weather. How often you’ll see families with young children go for ‘welly walks’ and the child is jumping in the puddles? This is because they haven’t built an internal representation that wet weather is bad, but they see it as fun! After all, as the saying goes, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.”
Our self-talk is allowing us to reframe these situations.
When we watch the TV of an evening and the weather forecast for the next day is good, we get an uplifting feeling of the things we can do, we make plans in our mind, call our friends and invite them along, and go out and enjoy them. Imagine that our perception is the opposite, we would miss out on lots of opportunities!
People in countries where it is constantly hot enjoy diversity in the weather. What we perceive as being good weather in the UK i.e. warm and sunny, is not perceived the same way in the Middle East. The heat becomes relentless and they want to escape it, they celebrate the rain.
Our internal representation (our mindset) is all down to how we interpret, perceive and respond to this stimulus and this will be reflected in how we present ourselves through our behaviour – we can be cheerful when it is warm and sunny ,or unhappy if it is raining and cold.
It might take practice and a little time, but by changing how we think about something like the weather, we can start to enjoy it all. This is the first step in how you really can transform your life with positive self-talk.
“The moment you decide to no longer think the same way as yesterday, something shifts inside you.” – Joe Dispenza
Building Positive Neural Pathways
The more often we respond to stimuli with positive self-talk, the more our brain adapts through a process called neuroplasticity. Over time, these habits we undertake become more permanent. For example, if you habitually react with negative self-talk in stressful situations, this response will become automatic.
A great example of this is ‘road-rage’. How often do we suffer, witness or hear about it? For example, a series of events could unravel like this: a driver cuts us up at a junction, or forces their way in front of us (their behaviour – the stimulus), and after we have filtered this behaviour our internal representation is that we have a huge sense of injustice because we’ve been waiting in the queue for ten minutes and our head gets full of self-talk, castigating the driver for their poor driving.
Then this can translate into our heightened stress that can lead to us blocking the other car, inching closer to the one in front, shouting at the other driver or jumping out (imagine the risk of this on a busy junction) remonstrating with the other driver verbally or physically, and upsetting other drivers because we’re now delaying them!! We get back in the car and we speed off.
What has actually been achieved? Nothing positive! We’ve got stressed, put our lives at risk, we’ve been poor role models to our children in the car, and we’re not going to get to our destination any quicker … in fact possibly later as a consequence of our actions.
But, we can do something about it!
Now, consider approaching the same scenario another way, positively – so assume the same event happens, and we self-talk differently, we recognise that there is an injustice but we let the driver in and acknowledge their lack of courtesy in our self-talk but we don’t become impassioned by it. Their lack of courtesy is their problem not ours! But, we also don’t know what their motivation is for ‘pushing in’ – maybe they have a personal crises and have to get somewhere urgently. As Stephen Covey said "seek first to understand" so they may have what they perceive a valid reason for their driving. That said, we are in control of how we feel and no one else. So, we see the driver inching closer but we slow our car and wave them in, they get in the queue and we are just one car behind, no big deal, we feel a moral sense of doing the right thing, we demonstrate positive role modelling to our passengers, and we get on your merry way without any increased stress.
Positive self-talk doesn’t have to be all “sunshine and rainbows.” It can be practical and grounded in reality. Negative self-talk can have a massively adverse effect on us, whereas shifting your mindset to positive self-talk can help neutralise negativity and foster feelings of well-being.
Using Self-Talk for Performance
Elite athletes often use a technique called “mental rehearsal” to prepare for events. By visualising scenarios and talking through the steps mentally, they prepare their bodies and minds to respond to specific stimuli.
For example, taking a free kick in football – the player will visualise and talk through how they are going to address the ball, how they are going to strike it, they will watch it in their mind willing it go in, and then have the sense of euphoria as it hits the back of the net. They’ve played it out in their mind and seen the ball go in. When the game arises and they have the free kick they will know what to do and know the feeling of success.
This mental practice builds neural pathways that boost performance. The same principle applies to everyday situations.
For instance, if you have a performance review with your boss tomorrow, negative self-talk might lead you to imagine the worst. You may start worrying that your boss doesn’t appreciate your work or that you're going to lose your job. This kind of thinking is overwhelming and unproductive.
Instead, try mentally rehearsing the conversation in a balanced way. Consider your strengths and areas for improvement. By doing this, you’ll enter the meeting with greater confidence, as your brain will already be familiar with the scenarios you’ve visualised. You'll feel more prepared and in control, increasing your chances of a positive outcome.
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Negative self-talk often leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy – if you believe you can’t succeed, you probably won’t.
But you can change this mindset by starting each day with positive affirmations. Every morning look in the mirror and make a positive affirmation of how valuable you are, how capable you are. It might feel uncomfortable to start but you will be surprised at the impact it has over time.
Thinking positively about yourself and using positive affirmations can boost your self-worth and change how you see yourself. Couple this with visualising how you want your day to go, and seeing everything play out perfectly.
And at the end of each day, reflect on your successes, no matter how small, and celebrate them with positive self-talk. If things didn’t go as planned, depersonalise the situation, remove the emotion, and consider what you could have done differently.
Remember, Edison and Dyson faced countless setbacks before achieving success. They didn’t fail, they just discovered one more way that didn’t work, bringing them closer to their goal.
So to break the habits that you have been building so long, start with trying to think a little differently – more positively. Focus on what could go right instead of what could go wrong, think of how you could re-frame a moment into something positive (remember the weather example), play out a better scenario in your mind and see it all go perfectly, and then rinse and repeat.
What you do more of you get more of!
