I Love Positive Self-Talk, Here’s 5 Reasons Why It’ll Change Your Life

When was the last time you had a real talk with yourself?

Hello, Nice to Meet Me!

When you think about someone talking to themselves the first thing that you think is probably not, “I wanna be like that person.” You’d usually be right. If we use it in the right ways it could completely change our outlook on life.

If you’re anything like me you likely have goals and ambitions. You probably want to accomplish those goals and reach those ambitions. Some are big, others small. Maybe a few are outlandish. Something that I’ve learned in my 10 or so years of programming and a couple of years of teaching is that people often have trouble accomplishing both of these things.

How do we not be that person that has a bunch of goals with none of them obtained? It might start with having a chat with yourself. After all, who knows you better than you?

Now the obvious aside, let's really talk about what a chat with yourself can do for you.

Be Your Own Hype-person

Every once in a while a friend or coworker will catch me talking to myself (aloud) when we’re working on something together and we’re stuck. Then something interesting usually happens. They’ll listen in and chime in and it becomes a conversation. Now, that piece isn’t what’s interesting. What’s interesting is that more often than not, this will get the thoughts flowing. More often than not, we catch a simple bug in a place we weren’t looking.

Now you’re thinking, “This isn’t really that amazing you caught a simple issue. Maybe if you were better at your job you wouldn’t have had the bug in the first place.”

You’d be right...

The thing is though, for us, we aren’t going to spend another 2 to 3 hours chasing an issue in the wrong place. We also caught the bug so cut me some slack 😂. Talking to yourself and thinking out loud can help you increase your focus on the task at hand. It also helps with critical thinking. Talking out loud can help you organize your thoughts and spark new ways to think about a problem.

For us, in this situation, it was something simple (I didn’t think talking you through one of my 6–12 month epiphanies would be entertaining). I like to try and use this at work, for personal projects, my finances, and even when I’m playing a game and trying to strategize.

Self-talk can also spark a couple of emotional responses in you as well. Switching gears, something that I still do to this day and catch myself doing at the gym or when doing something physically intensive is talking to myself.

Now it’s not a long speech. I’m not having a whole Braveheart monologue with myself. It’s usually something along the lines of a “You got this. Here we go. You can do this… easyyyyyy” Now me pretending I’m still a D1 athlete aside. It has been said that talking to yourself can also help with reducing stress and bolstering motivation.

It’s similar to a friend lending an ear when you’re stressed out and need to bounce your thoughts off of someone. For the motivation aspect, it's the same as that same friend giving you a quick pep talk!

Ok great, we’ve talked about a bunch of the benefits of self-talk:

1. It can potentially help increase your focus.
2. Critical thinking can be significantly improved.
3. Managing your stress can be easier when talking to yourself.
4. You can be your motivating force.

How do I apply this to my goals though?

Having a Goal is Just the Beginning

Think of having goals as the same as putting a destination into Google Maps. You have all of these potential things that you can do. You have all of these places that you could be. Now how useless would Google Maps be if it didn’t tell you exactly how to get there? Do you live and New York and want to drive to California? Good luck! You’re on your own kid…

Unlike Google Maps, we are our navigators. We have to decide what to do, where to go, when to go there, how to go about life, who to include in our lives, etcetera etcetera.

Of all the things that I mentioned, this last one is the one that I do the most.

At work when talking to my mentors and management, every once in a while I’ll tell them I sat down for 20–30 minutes to have an introspective session.

introspection — a reflective looking inward : an examination of one’s own thoughts and feelings

When I do this my goal is usually to map things out for myself and to talk through what I want to get done for the next couple of months. What did I do the last couple of months that I liked? Who did I hang out with that made me happy? Are there any new things that I want to try in the upcoming months? Is there something that happened that I wasn’t too fond of? What are my goals? Am I calling my mother enough? (The answer to that is always no.)

This talk could look a little something like this:

I want to save x amount of money by this date. That means that I need to save y every check. I want to become a technical executive at work. The thing that’s currently missing from my portfolio is patents. I’m going to start a patent group with my friends. Let’s shoot for 2 patent submissions by the end of the year. Bonus if one of them gets filed.

Here’s something I’m currently doing. I wanted to strengthen my 1 on 1 relationships with my friends. Ok, how can I go about doing that? What’s a good way to get to know someone? I then decided that I want to go on little dates with my friends. Once every couple of weeks.

Notice the goals are fleshed out. You may have heard of having SMART goals.

• Specific, be super descriptive!
• Measurable, you need to be able to track progress on the goal. It shouldn’t be arbitrary.
• Attainable, we don’t want to set ourselves up for failure. If you wanna be president that’s great. We should probably start with running for local office first. Maybe even just the president of your book club.
• Relevent, your goals should be cohesive and contribute back to whatever the larger picture is. If I want to lose 20 lbs and set a goal of not gambling this month to help that they’re not really related.
• Time Bound, give yourself a deadline and stick to it. We’re more likely to accomplish things if they have a deadline attached to them.

This is something that I do not do because it’s a success hack or because some internet guru told me to do it. I do it because it helps me organize my thoughts. I also won't pretend that I’m using SMART goals all the time. I do however take bits and pieces and use them as I need them. Looking at your time bound, I’m lazy and love to procrastinate.

The most important part of all of this is taking the time to:

1. Write down your goals!
2. Figure out what steps you need to take to get to your destination.
3. Have an honest conversation with yourself and define a doable timeline. How long is it going to take me to do this? Whatever that number is. Double it. Give yourself some room for progress.
4. Remembering to reevaluate. If it’s your first time. This will be short. The second time and the times after that, ask more questions. The last time I tried to do something like this, how did it go? How confident am I that I can get this done? Should I break this problem down further?

Remember to chat with yourself. Check-in. Make sure you’re ok and in the best position to accomplish those goals and not only have them. Do remember though, if you miss a few that’s ok. Reevaluate and run it back with a new plan!

I hope that you enjoyed this article! If you did please hold down the applause button as long as you can 👏🏽 (Really! Hold it! 😉)! Leave a comment to let me know your thoughts! Share with a friend or colleague! If you’d like to hear more from me please follow! Finally, please buy me a beer to keep me motivated! It all means the world to me! Cheers!

Check out another one of my articles if you have the time!

Citations:

Dickinson, Kevin. “5 Reasons Talking to Yourself Is Good for You.” Big Think, Big Think, 27 Sept. 2022, https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/talking-to-yourself/.

“Talking to Yourself: Is It Normal?” Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, 28 Nov. 2022, https://health.clevelandclinic.org/is-it-normal-to-talk-to-yourself/#:~:text=Self%2Dtalk%20is%20a%20healthy,health%20psychologist%20Grace%20Tworek%2C%20PsyD.