Protocol To Improve Your Sh*tty Self-Talk

Table of Contents

• Understanding your weapon: Self-Talk 🔱
• Don't fight it; Embrace it
• Protocol to improve your self-talk

Understanding your weapon: Self-Talk 🔱

I like to think of self-talk as a trident.

🔱 is made of the three types of self-talk content, a.k.a the words we say or think.

+/- Neutral Self-Talk: Self-talk irrelevant to the task content.

e.g., "I wonder how many Oreos can fit in a bathtub?"

+ Positive Self-Talk: Self-talk positive in its content.

e.g., "I can do this, let's grind it out and ge

- Negative Self-Talk: Self-talk negative in its content.

e.g., "I suck at this, everyone is watching and judging me."

How you use the content determines the effectiveness of the self-talk.

Attack Combos of Self-Talk

Attack Combo #1: Instruction Attack Combo #3: Associate

Attack Combo #2: Motivation Attack Combo #4: Dissociate

There are many purposes to the words we use. The attack combos outline four of the most common ways we use self-talk.

Remember that positive, negative, and neutral refer to the words, not their effect. All of them, some better than others, can carry out all 4 attacks.

1. Dissociative Self-Talk: Helps distract you from pain and discomfort and helps you endure. Ideal for when you need to zone out during a repetitive task, distract yourself from pain
2. Associative Self-Talk: Helps you get your focus back on the task you are trying to execute. Ideal for pushing aside distracting thoughts, controlling effort when things get hard
3. Motivational Self-Talk: Helps you get into the ideal headspace for performance. Ideal for building drive, controlling anxiety, psyching yourself up, or relaxing.
4. Instructional Self-Talk: Instructs you on how to do something. When words are used to break down the target goal into smaller steps, Ideal for learning a new skill, especially useful for individuals when starting with that skill.

The main takeaway from this is that when it comes to performance, the words we say matter, but so does the purpose behind using them. Positive phrases are ideal, but we can still do the job with negative and neutral self-talk.

How the 🔱 is used in attacking a situation is highly dependent on the person and the situation.

Don't Fight It; Embrace It

Thought-stopping in sport-psych research is a common protocol for improving our self-talk. This is where you notice a negative thought, actively stop it, and replace it with a positive one. However, most people implement this the wrong way.

For example, you will see a recommendation online that all you need to do is stand in front of the mirror and repeat to yourself, "I am beautiful, I am smart, I am capable," and voila! Every one of your dreams will come true now.

Self-talk is only effective when you truly believe what you are saying.

For those of us with terrible inner critics, our self-talk repertoire is filled with a sh*t ton of negative thoughts. They are deeply tied in with beliefs we hold about ourselves. Beliefs based on what others have said to us or things we have experienced in the past.

Replacing negative phrases with positive ones you don't believe will only make you cringe and feel like you are lying.

It's like your subconscious and conscious minds are in an epic tug of war. Subconsciously, your mind brings up past scenarios to strengthen your beliefs about being inadequate. Consciously, you fight this with overly positive phrases that you don't really believe.

More often than not, you are just left feeling drained. Burning away precious mental resources, trying to stop a negative thought forcefully.

Negative self-talk persists because our brains cling to supporting 'evidence' from the past. To counter it, don't just force positivity; actively gather proof against the negative belief and craft a positive statement that truly resonates with you.

To truly have your sh*tty self-talk work for you, work on understanding it, and creating your own stack of evidence against it, only then can you start changing it with positive phrases.

Laid out below is a simple protocol I use to have my self-talk, often negative, work for me.

A Better Protocol

What you need: A Journal

Step 1: Specificy Situation

Think of a situation where your self-talk gets in the way. Trying to change your self-talk in all situations will just mentally drain you. Be strategic and intentional.

Step 2: Becoming Self-Aware

Grab a journal and write down the negative thoughts that come up in that situation.

Why are those words coming up? What is their purpose? Are they trying to stop you from doing them something?

Step 3: Gather Evidence

Once you know the purpose of the negative self-talk, work on crafting evidence against it.

If your self-talk is working to tell you that you are a failure; work on recalling times you did succeed. Regardless of how big that success was. A win is a win.

Step 4: Positive Reminders

Once you have a few situations that contradict the negative self-talk, use them to create positive phrases that you resonate with.

Now, instead of forcing positivity, you have created meaningful positive phrases that are tied to your successes.

Step 5: Give It A Purpose

Give these positive phrases a purpose. Will they serve to instruct you when things get hard? Will they serve to motivate you, or get you back on task? Will they help you dissociate from discomfort when things get hard?

Step 6: Practice

Recreate the situation from step 1. where you want to switch the negative self-talk with these practiced phrases.

You have done the work to understand why the negative thoughts are coming up, now you need to get in the reps of changing them with positive phrases you believe.

When it comes to mental and physical training, the easiest solutions are the most enticing.

Do this workout to get ripped in 30 days!

Say these 4 positive phrases every day to turn your life around!

However, the truth is more complex, and it is all easier said than done.

Journaling, becoming self-aware, and embracing negativity are all hard work. When you start implementing the protocol above you won't see results right away.

You are working on reframing and embracing the negative thoughts that your mind has been solidifying for decades.

However, with time, practice, and patience, things will start to shift. If it can work for me, it can definitely work for you.

I will leave you at that, I hope you enjoyed it and I will see you in your inbox next Monday 😄