How to talk to yourself

The science behind the benefits of self-talk

Many of the benefits of talking to yourself are a natural consequence of the brain processes that plan and execute our talk. When we want to communicate using language – whether to ourselves or someone else – we have to focus on the message we want to convey in order to get our mental-talking engine going. And having focused on our ideas for the purpose of talking, thinking more about the ideas naturally follows, often clarifying thoughts and focusing our actions.

For example, suppose you’re at work and a co-worker suggests that the two of you get lunch today. You say: ‘I wish I could, but I have to finish this report by this afternoon.’ From a communication perspective, your words are doing their job – they express your regret about lunch and indicate your plan to work on the report. However, your talking is doing more than just communicating. The very act of saying ‘I need to finish this report by this afternoon’ focuses your attention on your report and may make it more likely that you will in fact finish it.

How can talking do this? Though we’re not typically aware of it, talking is a difficult mental job that requires significant internal focus to work properly. Each of us knows more than 50,000 words, and to communicate why we can’t go to lunch, we’ve got to retrieve the exact nine words we need – I, need, to, finish, this, report, by, this, afternoon. Digging out these and only these words from the 50,000 sitting in memory requires intense concentration on the ideas we want to convey, in this case: the goal of finishing the report. As a result, we are now more likely to keep the goal in mind, remember its importance, and keep working on it, rather than getting distracted by other less crucial activities.

Use talking to clarify your thinking and emotions

In this example based on talking to a co-worker, the benefits of talking arise from communicating your needs to someone else. But you can intentionally extract the same and other benefits by talking to yourself, to bring clarity to moments of upheaval and stress, and to help you reflect later on. Below I will walk you through four ways to do this – I suggest trying them all and then using whatever form of self-talking you find works best for you.

Talk to yourself to clarify your goals

If you need to stay on task to finish something, use self-talk whenever you get stuck. State your goal out loud or silently in your mind (or write it down), articulate why it’s important to you, and list the steps toward reaching it. Always be specific. For example, if you’re stuck on finishing that report, clearly state the key reasons why it’s crucial to get it finished. Don’t just say that it’s important – spell out the reasons why. You can also do this exercise in your head, but speaking aloud or writing tends to prompt the specificity you need, without the shortcuts that can happen with internal self-talk.

Next, state out loud, silently or in writing how you’re going to make progress. Again, it’s important to mention the details. Don’t just say: ‘I’m going to work hard.’ Instead, be explicit about the steps and strategies you’re going to take. These might include getting feedback from a colleague, drafting small sections at a time, putting away distractions, and so on.

Talking in this detailed way can help reveal gaps in your thinking, such as how to organise your next steps or even why this report is important. You can then use talking to yourself to further work through these questions and clarify your thinking. For example, do you doubt the importance of the report simply because you don’t feel like working on it? Would you feel better about it if you got a key section done?

In other words, you can create a sort of conversation with yourself, pursuing alternative ways of thinking about a problem to gain some clarity about your own feelings, and chart a good course of action. When talking things through in this way, it’s important to really try out multiple perspectives and not just state the position you were already leaning toward.

Hone your self-talking skills for stressful situations

Let’s say that you’ve talked to yourself, focused better, got clarity on the report, and set yourself on the path to finishing it. That’s wonderful, but how are you going to build on this positive outcome and not make it a one-off event? Athletes and coaches consider this question all the time – how to go beyond winning one particular race or match and create repeatable success in other situations down the road? A key answer to that question, for athletes and anyone else, is to develop a regular habit of positive, helpful self-talk, so that it’s at the ready when needed.

The exact form of talking will be different for different people and events, but there are some key themes that are adaptable in many stressful performance-related situations:

• Remind yourself to focus on controlling what you can control and that you shouldn’t get distracted by things that you have no hope of changing. Athletes learn to say things like: ‘Focus on footwork; ignore the crowd,’ and you can adapt this kind of talk to your own situation – focus on your report, job search, and so on, and ignore naysayers or other distractions.
• Remind yourself what you’re good at. Even if you feel inadequate to tackle some challenge, you can still reflect on your strengths. These are not empty affirmations – if you name your skills and state how you can use those strengths to get through a challenge, you are using your self-talk both for motivation and for problem-solving. You might say: ‘I’m organised. I’ve done this before. I can adapt the strategies I used last year to this new situation.’
• Stay both positive and specific. In her early writing days, the award-winning author Octavia Butler was justifiably terrified that she wouldn’t earn enough money to live on, and would have to give up her dream of being a novelist. She responded with self-talk, much of it written, and the specificity of her approach is worth emulating. She went way further than general motivational messages like ‘So be it! See to it!’ to produce incredibly detailed affirmations supporting her writing skill and her path. This included reminding herself of specific steps she needed to take to be the best writer she could be – such as using facts in her science fiction but also making her readers feel emotionally engaged with her characters. She also wrote down elaborate descriptions of what her success would look like: ‘My books will be read by millions of people!’ She wasn’t wrong.

Use self-talk to calm your emotions

Self-talk isn’t useful only for tasks and goals, but also for managing your emotions. When in an intense emotional state, we often don’t quite know what we’re feeling. For example, we might be able to say we’re ‘upset’, but this vague term could mean many things – scared, angry, disappointed, and so on. These swirling emotions can make it hard to think clearly, but you can combine two different talking strategies to help.

• To gain clarity about your emotions, talk about them as specifically as possible. Studies show that, the more precisely people name the emotions they’re feeling, the more benefit they get from talking about their emotional state. Naming your negative emotions such as fear or anger doesn’t only tamp down intense fight-or-flight reactions, it can give you more insight – for instance, you might realise that you’re feeling several emotions simultaneously. I remember a time I was able to name ‘worry’ about a disturbing situation, but then, with some extra effort, I realised that I was also angry. Getting to both of these emotions helped me figure out how to talk about it with others.
• Use your talking to distance yourself from the emotional chaos. Talk to yourself as if you were talking to someone else: instead of saying ‘I’m so angry,’ use the pronoun ‘you’ or your name. So if your name is Maya, you could say something like: ‘OK, Maya, you’re angry about this whole situation. What are you going to do now?’ This will create distance between you and the upsetting situation, so you can plan your next steps more logically, without a flight-or-fight feeling of panic guiding your actions.

Talk to yourself about the past

So far, I’ve shown you how to use talking to get clarity in a moment of need – when you need to finish a report, cope with emotional upset, and similar challenges. Talking is very useful in these moments, but you can also use talking at times of calm, to gain insight about past events and think more clearly about the future. Translating your experiences into words helps you better understand and process what happened.

Although you can use any type of talking for this kind of reflection, the most common form is written, in the form of journaling. Writing is particularly suited to reflection, because it is slower than speech, creating more time for contemplation. The written record also allows you to look back on your prior descriptions and opinions, and consider them anew. Follow these tips to get the most out of journaling:

• While I’m referring to written self-talk here, if you’d rather talk to yourself aloud or in your head (my personal favourite), or record notes on your phone or some other format, then use whatever approach will keep you talking. Similarly, if you do choose writing, use the mode that makes it most likely that you’ll stick to the practice, be that a pen and notebook, typing on your phone, or whatever.
• Try to cultivate a regular habit of journaling: every morning for 10 minutes a day would be excellent, but if this doesn’t fit your schedule, then pick some routine that does work, set reminders for yourself, and keep going even if you miss a day.
• Write about issues that are bothering you. It may seem counterintuitive to dwell on upsetting events, but studies show that journaling about negative situations yields better insight and perspective on them.
• But don’t forget to write about the good things too. In stressful times, it’s easy to be overwhelmed with the negatives. Writing about what is good and what you’re grateful for helps bring balance to your thinking. Any object, pet, person or act of kindness that you appreciate can be worth writing about and reflecting on its value.
• If you’re stuck for what to write about, read over some previous journal entries for inspiration. Or put down some topics you aren’t ready to tackle yet but want to eventually. Often just beginning a list like this starts some useful additional notes that you can use to spark more writing.
• As always, be specific. Add details about what irritates you or gives you pleasure and be sure to describe your own emotional reactions. Naming specific emotions is beneficial in journaling, just as it is in the moment of emotional stress. So don’t just scribble: ‘I’m irritated at my boss’ or ‘I’m grateful for my cat.’ Instead, you might make a list of your boss’s three most irritating habits, and how you might handle them next time you encounter them. Or describe how you feel when your cat is curled up next to you.
• Some topics may warrant your writing about them over several days or revisiting them days or weeks later. There’s no rule about needing to be ‘finished’ with a topic; write about it for as little or as much as seems useful to you.