The Power of Self-Talk: How Your Inner Voice Can Enhance Your Performance and Quality of Life

Have you ever found yourself replaying a past event in your mind, wishing for a different outcome? You know, the kind of scenario where you imagine what you could have done differently.

What if you could improve your performance, confidence, and quality of life with a simple tool that you already possess? That tool is self-talk, and while we have been using it since childhood, we have not been taught how to use it effectively as a performance tool.

In this article, we will explore the role that self-talk plays in our lives and how to use it to improve our overall success and quality of life.

You and I have been using self-talk throughout our lives, starting in our early childhood, but we were not taught the benefits thereof or how to use it effectively as a performance tool. Imagine you were given a hammer but instead of knocking nails into the wood, you put the hammer to the nail and attempted to push the nail in with force. This is obviously a highly ineffective way to use a hammer and will produce poor results. In the same way, we have the ability to talk to ourselves in such a way that will produce peak results, but as the hammer example, we are not using this tool self-talk efficiently.

The goal of this article is therefore to equip you with the necessary insight to efficiently and effectively use this performance tool, self-talk. This will be done by looking at the role that self-talk plays in our lives and how it can be used as a performance tool to improve our overall success and quality of life.

Self-talk or inner speech as it is also known is a verbalised thought, which is basically the silent talking that takes place inside of our minds. It plays an important role in what is known in psychology as our executive functioning, which is comprised of motivation, planning, regret, self-identification, and so forth. It also plays an important role in regulating our emotional state.

Regret

We all have replayed an event, that had an undesirable outcome, running through the scenario and ‘thinking’ our way to a different ending. “What if I did this instead?” This coming up with alternative outcomes to an event in your mind is an example of the role that self-talk plays in regret and analysing our actions. This means that self-talk can help us see where we went wrong so that we do not repeat the same mistakes. However, we must be careful not to get caught up in the loop of obsessively replaying our mistakes, since these events are also emotionally charged and can easily keep us in a negative and unproductive state. Remember, being in an unproductive state blocks our ability to perform at our peak because peak performance can only be achieved in an optimal emotional state.

In addition, being overly critical of yourself could also have adverse effects, as the following examples indicate, “I’m so stupid for doing that, I’m just a failure, I hate myself”. Saying such negative messages about yourself can have no positive outcome. Instead, these messages get internalised and accepted as a true reflection of ourselves.

Once again, be aware of what the emotional outcomes are of speaking to yourself and about yourself in a negative manner. Do you think it allows you to be in a productive and resourceful state?

Regret’s main purpose is that it allows us the opportunity to analyse our mistakes, but remember our main focus should always be on creating a better future as opposed to focusing on the past.

Planning Future

Likewise, self-talk plays a similar function in planning for the future, and the stories that we tell ourselves about what is possible in the future. If we can imagine a future of possibility, then we are more likely to take the action needed to create this future. Whereas, if we tell ourselves that we will never be able to achieve our goals then we will not take the necessary action needed to achieve it.

This is a problem that a lot of people face, they lose simply because they don’t believe they can win. How we speak to ourselves can help us build this belief or destroy it.

When looking at your future it is important to dream big, be overly optimistic, and then use a deductive model to determine what you need to do now in order to increase the probability of your desired future manifesting. What this means is that you start with a vision of what you want your future to look like then work it back all the way to the present, looking at the required steps you have to take today in order to manifest this vision.

In professional sports, self-talk is used as a tool to help athletes prepare for games or even novel challenges since it also has the ability to allow us to use our inner-talk and visualisation to anticipate what could go wrong and how to counter it. So, in a similar fashion to how self-talk is used in regret it can also be used to prepare for the future, by running through this picture beforehand, allowing us to anticipate what could come next. When facing nervousness before a big event, high performers, know that the key to their success lies in what they tell themselves leading up to and right before the event. They can literally control their response to fear. They tell themselves things like “I am fearless”, “I am courageous, daring, and strong”. As you can see, positive self-talk in the form of affirmations can help us quiet the noise in our heads that is created by fear, thereby giving us larger control of our actions as opposed to reacting based on negative emotion.

As a matter of fact, what separates the average from the great is their ability to override how they would usually respond to fear and other negative emotions. We then idealise them as being superhuman for having the courage to do what most would not, when in fact we all have the ability to perform superhuman acts, but it starts with the quality of our self-talk.

The key is to ensure that you always speak favorable about the future and anticipate challenges that are likely to arise. Remember the future will arrive, but how it arrives is up to you.

So far, we have touched on the role that self-talk plays in regret, planning for the future, and its power in professional sport. It is clear from what we have been introduced to so far that self-talk is more than ‘the mere voice in your head’.

Self-talk also plays a critical role in self-identification, who we think we are, and basically how we view ourselves. This view of ourselves stems over into other facets of our life. For example, your confidence, your view of your ability and what you can achieve will directly affect your work, your relationships with others, and so forth. It is therefore important that you and I deliberately and consciously create ourselves.

So that means inner-talk or self-talk is basically the relationship that you have with yourself. And like any relationship, the quality of the relationship depends on the quality of the communication.

The important thing is to learn how to use self-talk instead of having it use you, so that you can experience enhanced performance on the tasks that matter.

Many mental disorders such as anxiety and depression stem from a negative relationship with yourself. In other words, understanding how to better communicate with yourself and to yourself could also improve your mental and emotional well-being.

In conclusion, self-talk is a powerful tool that can help us achieve peak performance and success. By using self-talk effectively, we can regulate our emotional state, analyze our mistakes without dwelling on them, and plan for a better future. Whether we are athletes preparing for a competition or professionals striving for success, positive self-talk in the form of affirmations can help us overcome negative emotions and control our actions.

Remember, the key to successful self-talk is speaking favorably about the future and anticipating challenges that are likely to arise. So, start using self-talk today to propel yourself towards greater success and a better quality of life.