Originally written on March 26, 2023
We all talk to ourselves. Period. The way we think is often in conversation with ourselves or the people we think about. A concept that comes up in many areas is the idea of paying attention to what we think about and how we think. Changing a physical habit, like flossing or exercising, has the benefit of having a tangible and outward behavior that is measurable. But how do I measure a mental habit or the changes in the way we think?
The answer to that question lies in our behavior and the outcome of our actions. Often changing behavior will force us to think differently. It’s an example of a bottom-up strategy in therapy where an outward action forces our brain to act differently, like yoga, exercise, diet, or meditation. Forcing oneself to simply “not lie” is a step towards learning how to be honest. In contrast, top-down strategies are things like talk therapy, CBT, or religious devotionals.
Such top-down practices, in some sense, change our understanding, perspective, and thought processes which in turn lead to different behavior while bottom-up practices change our behavior and the rest of us follow along. Effective and healthy approaches to self-change include both. Many healthy and fulfilled people do this almost accidentally. Maybe they grew up in a setting with the right environment and stimulus to teach the person from birth how to live in the kind of way we all want to live. Maybe they learned from their mistakes. Maybe they got lucky.
Another effective practice is self-talk. The research and proof on this is more than solid. Our spiritual practices often invoke it for a reason. Self-talk shows up everywhere. I find it stupid that it works. More specifically, what I mean is that it’s “stupid” that something as simple as practicing talking to yourself works to change how you think. It feels stupid to me because it’s such a simple practice and I feel almost like a child when I’m telling myself that I “like” riding my bike instead of driving or telling myself that it feels good to take on responsibilities like hanging my clothes.
It partly feels stupid because I think I shouldn’t have to talk to myself as if I were some young athlete learning a new activity and needs a coach to make them feel better about themselves – even that feeling (feeling stupid about talking to myself) is an incredibly common feeling and the one that often prevents people from not only practicing it but also sticking with it. What’s actually stupid is that we wouldn’t do something that works while we live in discontentment over something about ourselves that we could change. It just seems too simple, too mundane, and too unnecessary.
However, again, the science and proof from countless people now is undeniable. How you talk to yourself and what you tell yourself matters so much because we all are constantly doing it anyway. If you really pay attention to your thoughts, you’ll find it full of conversations, with yourself and others. We all spend a lot of time doing it, which means we all spend energy and time on it. These times and that energy and time have real and measurable consequences in our tangible lives. It’s why we respond to our exes the way we do.
There are more than a couple of things that could be said about the voices in our heads, but there are two that I have found to be transformative for me. I was talking about this with a friend and when I asked them to take a step back and answer “What do you feel when you’re talking to yourself?”, they answered without hesitation “Guilt.” That guilt and shame about talking to ourselves actually keep us in the same patterns and thinking the same thoughts that produce the behavior that produces the life we wish would be different than it was. And I am so good at it. If we could learn how to talk to ourselves and not feel bad about it, it would remove that extra burden from the already heavy burdens we have to carry just to live this life.
Secondly, If we can catch whenever we start talking to or about someone else in our head and then change it to only talking to ourselves about ourselves (still within the context of the other person or people), we then can start changing our false assumptions that we are the victim of other people’s choices or the whole of our circumstances. We act as our own coach telling ourselves to stop focusing on others or to deal with X or focus on Y. This subtle shift pays out huge dividends not just over time. It also can change things immediately for ourselves.
By taking out the weight of guilt and shame from our inner conversations and shifting our focus from the things outside to the things inside (our minds), we can better navigate through the complicated messiness life often is full of other humans trying to figure out their crap. We know this to be true in normal, real conversations we have with real people: if we can change the feeling around the conversation and the focus (like from one of self-defense to one of understanding), the entire conversation changes and so does the relationship and everything that follows. Likewise, if we can learn to give ourselves to feel and think what we are already thinking, we stop spiraling and spinning in circles because we let our thoughts run their course. We are also about to pay attention to our inner conversation, separate from it, and develop some thoughts about our thoughts.
If we can interpret our own conversations with a different voice (still our own), we can challenge and guide our inner thought process by focusing not on the external and uncontrollable nature of all the people and circumstances outside of our identity and instead channel that energy and time inward to focus on we can think and do differently than we are currently. Over time, with practice and consistency, these conversations we have with ourselves about the conversations we host inside our minds start to change into a new, evolving normal. Self-talk matters. It changes things. No one is too old, mature, smart, or strong to do it. The weak, fragile, and insecure will refuse to even to the point of deceiving themselves that they may already be good at it. We become our own gas-lighters and abusers.
