Self Talk

The Way We Talk to Ourselves

I once read a novel by C. S. Forester, The Sky and the Forest, which introduced me to the idea that a culture with no word for a concept has difficulty even conceiving of it. Said differently, our words shape our thoughts, and our thoughts shape the quality of our lives. Language is not just a tool for communication—it is the architecture of consciousness.

Consider a statement that, at first glance, seems harmless. A mother might say to her child, “No one in our family is any good at singing.” That phrase, likely repeated, can become part of the child’s identity. What begins as a casual comment becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, shaping what the child believes is possible. A single sentence can define the edges of a life.

More damaging are the harsher messages that echo through childhood: You’re worthless. You’re stupid. You’re not enough. What is spoken twenty times by a parent may be repeated internally by the child ten thousand times over a lifetime. These messages form the scaffolding of self-perception. Cognitive psychology calls this process internalization—the way external speech becomes the internal voice that governs how we think and feel (Beck, 1976).

To counteract this, many people use the practice of positive self-talk—writing and repeating statements such as “I am attractive,” “I will succeed,” or “People enjoy being around me.” At first, these affirmations can feel artificial or even uncomfortable. Often, when someone says, “I am an attractive person,” an opposing voice in the mind immediately replies, “That’s a lie.” This resistance can feel disorienting, almost like a mild dissociation. But that tension reveals something useful: self-talk scripts expose the beliefs we already hold about ourselves.

When working with people, I listen carefully to how they speak inwardly and outwardly. Often, I hear echoes of early life—patterns of speech and thought that still dominate decades later. I’ll sometimes say, “You don’t believe good things are meant for you. You think they’re for other people.” Usually, the person pauses, realizing that this belief has been replayed subconsciously for years. The discovery is painful but liberating: awareness is the first step in changing the story.

Neuroscience provides a powerful metaphor for this process. Every thought generates an electrical signal that travels along a neural pathway. Each repetition strengthens that path, like walking the same trail through a forest until it becomes well-worn and automatic. When we attempt to think differently—to replace “I am unworthy” with “I am enough”—we are blazing a new trail through dense undergrowth. It feels slow and unnatural at first, but with practice, the new path becomes easier to follow. This is neuroplasticity in action—the brain’s ability to reorganize itself through repeated experience (Doidge, 2007).

Because these mental pathways are built through repetition, I often tell people it’s only reasonable that it may take saying a new belief a thousand times before it begins to feel true. Change is not a single moment of inspiration but a physical rewiring of the brain through persistent practice. The way we talk to ourselves is not just habit—it is neurobiology, culture, and identity intertwined.

In the end, words are not neutral. They are tools of construction or destruction, carving grooves in the mind that define how we experience the world. By changing our words, we gradually change our thoughts—and by changing our thoughts, we reshape our lives.

References

Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders. International Universities Press.

Doidge, N. (2007). The brain that changes itself: Stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science. Viking Press.