The Importance of Self-Talk

Are you ever aware of how you talk to yourself? It may sound silly, but the way to talk to yourself is more important than you think. Self-talk can be your inner voice or you talking to yourself out loud, and can impact your emotions and your self view. There are two way to describe self-talk: negative and positive.

Here a few examples of negative self talk:

“You can’t ever get things right”

“You’re going to fail like you always do”

“I’m such an idiot”

This type of self talk can have effects beyond you just being hard on yourself. According to Health Direct negative self talk can:

• lower your confidence

• make you feel less certain about your abilities

• increase anxiety and depression

• make tasks feel harder

• affect how much attention and effort you put into something

• affect your body image, which may lead to eating disorders

It may seem like you’re just trying to keep yourself accountable and keep your head out of the clouds. But in reality, you could be doing more harm than good. Imagine you had a friend that you saw for hours everyday, and while you were together all they did was talk about how stupid and ugly you were. Would you put up with that? Of course not. So why put up with it from yourself?

Instead of grounding your perspective about yourself, you’re skewing it. Yes, there may be areas where you need to grow, but instead of allowing for growth, you are keeping yourself in a negative headspace. Just the way flowers can’t grow in the dark, how can you expect yourself to change when you keep yourself in a dark mindset. 

Now let’s talk about the other side of the coin: Positive Self Talk. This type of self talk is highly encouraged and some examples are:

“You’re going to have a great day”

“You may have messed up, but it’s ok”

“You’re can do this, you just need practice”

Health Direct also covers the ways that positive self talk affects you:

• feel more confident about your abilities

• stay focused and motivated

• reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression

• feel more in control of your life

Positive self talk is not narcissistic thinking. What do I mean by that? Narcissistic thinking  has you placing yourself on a pedestal and thinking of yourself as never wrong. Instead of acknowledging your own mistakes and planning on doing better, you villainize others and think yourself better than. 

By looking at the examples above, I’m sure you can tell that actual positive self-talk requires you to offer grace to yourself. It isn’t you ignoring where you might fail and lying to yourself, instead you accept the mistake and you also accept that the mistake doesn’t change your identity–failing doesn’t make you a failure. Being able to be clear minded and both acknowledge a mistake while giving yourself grace, also allows you to extend that grace to other people as well. 

If you know how the way you talk and think about yourself affects you, then next time you look in the mirror, what are you going to say?

Author: Ally Rankin

Ally is a beloved part of the Flying Cow Fam. She manages our Lubbock, TX store with her BFF Atlas (shop pup!), who is usually found snoozing in the back. She got her Bachelors degree from Texas Tech where she majored in English and minored in Technical Communications. When she’s not creating content, managing her team, or writing blogs, she can usually be found making a new cup of coffee–she promises it’s not a problem.