Talking into yourself: What you think to yourself affects what you do

Everyone talks to themselves or to themselves in their head from time to time. For example, you are shopping without a shopping list and say to yourself "You still need to get milk and something for dinner." You can also say very different things to yourself, such as "how stupid that you don't know where the milk is." These two examples clearly have a different effect on the emotion you can get from them. In this blog I will go into more detail about talking into yourself and how to use that in a positive way

What is talking into yourself?

You can talk to yourself out loud; usually, this is more like a mumble when you’re speaking mainly to yourself. You can also talk to yourself in your mind. That’s more like the voice you hear in your head that can say all sorts of things to you. Sometimes you clearly direct that voice with conscious thoughts, and sometimes it suddenly starts talking to you. Then a thought simply pops up from the unconscious.

Keep in mind, these are just thoughts. They really don’t have to mean anything at all. Especially if you often have negative self-talk, it’s good to know that you can ignore those thoughts or consciously reframe them.

Many of these kinds of unconscious thoughts that "suddenly" start talking to you stem from your beliefs that you have built up over the course of your life. Many of these you came up with when you were a child. This is because that is the period when you learn the most about how the world works and how you function, or should function, in it.

You may have once been taught that you are stupid if you can't find something, but if you then take that negative thought for truth you may therefore be taking a child's opinion for truth.

A bit of a waste or not? At least it is if it's a negative thought.

Talking into yourself through emotions

If you find yourself in a situation that makes you angry at yourself, this often leads to negative self-talk and ruminating on the past (such as how you made that stupid mistake).

If, on the contrary, you find yourself in a situation that is frightening, this causes you to talk both positively and negatively within yourself. In fact, you often talk to yourself in anticipation. So how to deal with the future. Instead, you get thoughts about how to achieve your goal, such as overcoming or avoiding the fearful[1].

The effect of talking into yourself

Especially with athletes, the effect of talking to yourself has been measured. Talking to yourself properly improves athletic performance.

It also improves your focus. For example, you won’t let yourself get distracted—or, at the very least, you’ll keep those distractions in check. Additionally, this prevents your ego from being drained by negative self-talk[2].

So it keeps you mentally stronger.

Using your name

In addition, there are multiple ways you can talk to yourself. For example, you can use your own name. Or talk to yourself in the^3rd person.

This helps you to be more in control of yourself and your emotions. For example, this can be incredibly helpful in keeping your cool during a stressful situation[3].

Reduce negative talking within yourself

Talking to yourself can therefore be incredibly constructive, but it’s a shame when negative self-talk influences your behavior too much and keeps your self-confidence and self-esteem low.

There are several ways you can reduce negative talking within yourself.

Origin conviction finding

Therefore, it is important to find out what beliefs actually cause negative talking within yourself.

To figure this out, it is helpful to know that beliefs are often in your subconscious, and they often originated in childhood. Some moment in your life caused you to think "this is how the world works and how I should function in it."

Through regression, you can identify the moment that triggered a lot of negative self-talk. During regression, a hypnotherapist puts you under hypnosis and suggests that you go back to the moment that caused so much negative self-talk. Because you’re open to these kinds of suggestions while under hypnosis, a memory that triggered this will quickly surface.

Then the hypnotist helps you reinterpret this moment. To look at this moment with your mature knowledge, so that your beliefs in your subconscious will change and you will naturally suffer less from negative thoughts.

Ego strengthening for less negative self-talk

An Iranian study examined the effects of ego-strengthening hypnosis techniques in housewives who suffered from negative introspection. These sessions made extensive use of metaphors and symbols through visualizations involving, for example, climbing mountains.

These techniques helped to strengthen the housewives' ego, and compared with the control group who had received only psychotherapy, they also had less negative talking to themselves after hypnotherapy[4].

Consciously talking positive into yourself

By consciously talking positively into yourself and about yourself, you can also do much to improve your self-confidence and performance. Consequently, many athletes do this consciously. Muhammad Ali, for example, said he was the greatest even before he really knew he was the best boxer. This only to improve his performance[5].

Hypnosis can help with this, too. For example, you can learn self-hypnosis from a hypnotist and extract appropriate suggestions that counteract your negative self-talk, such as:

"I'm fun."

"I'm good."

"I can do anything."

"I decide what I do."

These are just examples. Depending on the times when you are most bothered by talking negatively to yourself, a hypnotherapist may choose to give you other suggestions to repeat during self-hypnosis.

Snap out of it

Another way to talk less negatively into yourself is to put a rubber band on your wrist. Every time you notice that you are talking negatively to yourself in your mind you take the rubber band and let it fall back onto your skin, a kind of "snap."

This allows you to be focused for a moment on something other than those thoughts, so your next thought can be about completely something other than talking negatively to yourself.

Priming yourself positively

Thereby, what you do in the morning is also incredibly important to the mood you are in for the rest of the day. What I always recommend is to think of 3 things you are grateful for in the morning before you even pick up your phone.

No matter how big or small those things are, as long as you start your day with gratitude.

This is equal much more positive than looking at your phone and seeing that you have all kinds of emails or reading negative news.

Another way to “prime” yourself in the morning to think more positively is, for example, to say the positive suggestions you received for self-hypnosis to yourself in the mirror[6].

So there are all kinds of things you can do to ensure that you talk to yourself in the most positive way possible. Hypnosis can play a great supporting role in this. Want to know what hypnosis feels like and whether you can bring other people under hypnosis?

Why not come to a hypnosis workshop? These are held in Wormerveer and Zwolle.

Would you like to get started right away with techniques to help yourself and others? Then come to a seminar or sign up for one of our training courses, which are held in Wormerveer, Zwolle, or online.

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10413200.2016.1213330

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X16301968

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-04047-3

[4] http://www.sleepandhypnosis.org/ing/Pdf/a4560706842847baade1ceff1b3543e8.pdf

[5] https://www.getlevelhead.com/blog/2017/2/26/self-talk

[6] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/loving-through-your-differences/201911/change-your-self-talk