Dear Power Source subscribers:
Below is a snippet of an article I wrote for Addicted2Success. You can read the whole thing here, or just grab the most important takeaways, below! My favorite tip is the third one—did you know that talking to yourself in third person actually yields better results than in first person? Try it out for yourself!
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“Words matter. And the words that matter most are the ones you say to yourself.”
David Taylor-Klaus
There’s nothing more important than to have people in your life who have your back when times are tough and who cheer for you when the road is smoother.
These are the people who pick you back up when you’ve been knocked down, who remind you of all the great things you’ve accomplished when you didn’t think you could, and who are there to celebrate the wins with you.
But no matter how many cheerleaders we have in our lives, at some point, we’re alone again with our thoughts. And that’s when we have to become our own best cheerleaders. That’s when we need to have the skills to talk ourselves off the ledge. That’s when we need to decide for ourselves what we’re allowing in and what we’re rolling off our backs.
Here are a few steps to upping the game on your self-talk and giving yourself the motivation and perseverance that you need.
1. Eavesdrop on your thoughts
Before you can do anything about how you talk to yourself, first you have to listen in and know what’s currently going on. We are all in constant conversation with ourselves, but much of this conversation is unconscious—recycled content we’ve told ourselves (or our parents have told us, or an old boss, etc.) over the years. The first step in boosting our self-talk is becoming acutely aware of what’s going on in that conversation right now. Simply sit down in a quiet spot and listen in for a while. Don’t try to change the conversation, try to let it happen as if you are simply a witness to it.
Imagine your inner dialogue as a movie script with lots of different characters all playing various roles. As you listen, the constant white noise of our inner chatter might soon separate itself out, and you’ll recognize the different voices of fear, anger, jealousy, uncertainty, or other underlying emotions. You might also hear the words of your parents, old teachers, mentors, or competitors, taking up residence in your mind without your permission.
Now is the time to start showing some of these voices the exit. You don’t need to keep replaying Uncle John’s cutting remarks about your potential. Nor do you need your 15-year-old self’s fears of being seen.
Now is your time.
You are not the person of your past, and you are not merely a Russian doll in a stack of Russian dolls carrying the family belief sets. You are your own person, with your own potential, goals, and dreams. Your emotions get to stay, but you do get to remind them that ultimately, you’re in charge. Start clearing the way for healthier, fresher inner conversations.
2. Do unto yourself
When you send an email but quickly realize you forgot the attachment, what’s your initial response? Do you beat yourself up for it, or do you laugh it off, fixing the mistake and moving on?
How about other mistakes or missteps—how long do you replay them in your mind, rehashing what went wrong rather than making plans to do it better next time?
Chances are, you’re harder on yourself than you would be on anyone else. Notice the difference between how you treat yourself when you make a mistake and how you’d treat others for making a similar mistake. Then, work to offer yourself the same kindness, patience, understanding, and compassion as you would anyone else.
3. Try talking to yourself in the third person
Now that we’ve cleared the way in the mind for healthier self-talk, and committed to practicing more kindness toward ourselves, it’s time to get talking. But—how?
Making sure that our self-talk is positive and supportive is definitely the first key.
But most of us tend to default to talking to ourselves in an “I” language. However, a study on self-talk shows that it works best use your own name instead, and talk in third person. The idea is that when we use “I” language, it tends to slant negative, despite our best efforts. So, instead of saying, “I don’t know if I can do this,” we might say “Mary, you’ve done this a thousand times before, you’ve got it!”
Psychologist Ethan Kross, who led this study, said,
“What we find is that a subtle linguistic shift — shifting from ‘I’ to your own name — can have really powerful self-regulatory effects.”
We all need to surround ourselves people who can build us back up when we’re down, and recognize the successes along the way. But the most important person to do this work is you. It’s in the intimate moments when you’re with yourself where you can either allow failure or disappointment to tear down your dreams, or use these moments to remember and reinforce why you wanted the dream in the first place.