Positive Self Talk
Hey there, you! You alright? Now, I wasn't sure what to talk about today, I base these short Friday bonus episodes on my full length Monday ones that go out on Patreon. Look me up if you want some extra mental health boosting psychoeducation loveliness. But I wasn't sure which one to use, and whilst I was making a cup of tea to decide, I scrolled through social media for a couple of minutes and I had a memory pop up from 2011 where I did a presentation to, it was a Women's Institute group and I just started making my podcast public at that point. Before that, it was just an audio file on my website every week or so. You couldn't really call it a podcast as such. And the picture reminded me of the importance of positive self talk you see, because that was what my presentation had been about, because that was based on my very first proper RSS fed, iTunes compatible podcast episode back in the day, which was inspired by me saying to myself, when I first thought about making a podcast, I can't do that, before catching myself and adding the word yet on the end, because I can't do that yet, opened the door for me to work out how to just do that.
And here I am. Goodness knows how many millions of downloads later I'm still doing it. And I encourage you to see if you might need to improve your self talk to make sure you speak to yourself in ways that are more motivational.
Now that doesn't necessarily mean all that sort of over the top, Yeah, you can do it, I'm the best, sort of motivational messages that we can give ourselves.
You know, that might help to a degree in some situations. It might boost confidence in some respects. Providing our self esteem is high enough in the first place. Because we already believe it, but there is no point telling yourself you can do it if you actually believe you can't. Because what gets reinforced is that you're lying to yourself, and that's not a good idea, that's not something you want to become unconscious.
So, your self talk needs to be realistic. Things like, I know I've made some mistakes in the past, but I can get better. That sort of thing. There was a study once with some kids into what the organisers called instructional self talk. And what they were looking for was this sort of mental message that's even more useful than just motivational speeches.
And so they called it Instructional Self Talk. And this was with school children. Ten year old kids in P. E. lessons. Playing darts! And it was kind of like creating a running commentary. And normally we engage in this running commentary all the time, particularly if we're doing something that's quite difficult.
So this research that was done, it was with school children playing darts, to give it a three part process. So you would imagine what you had to do, visualise it in your mind, what it was you wanted to do. So you would imagine, in this case it was throwing the dart at the number you'd been given. You'd imagine throwing it, and then you'd throw it.
And then you would analyse what you did to know how to correct it if you needed to later on. So, what they did, for example, if you threw it and it was too high, you then told yourself the simple phrase, Lower next time. That was it. You just said lower next time to yourself. No judgment. No criticism, just Lower next time.
Then you visualise it again, you throw it again, and it would be a little bit lower. Because you told yourself what you needed to do. So there's always been this three part to it, where you imagine doing it, you do it, and then you analyse what you did. And this worked, because doing that was far better than the children that were just chucking darts, hoping for the best and practicing how to play and trying to learn how to get it right.
These people improved their dart score, but not just because of practice. But because of the positive self talk, because the practice only kids didn't improve anywhere near as much, and I wonder what they had in their mind. So if we're carrying out a difficult or unfamiliar task, if we're learning something new, we need to make sure that we've got a supportive, running commentary in our head.
We need to tell ourselves what we want to do. And tell ourselves what we want to do next time, afterwards. And eventually, that becomes unconscious competence, and you can do it. You don't even need to think about it anymore. That's how positive self talk should work. That's why if we catch ourselves with a negative statement, it's a good idea to stick the word yet on the end. Or maybe a question mark. I can't do that? Because then you can say, Yeah, I can. And what do you know? You can.
So, I'll leave that with you and I'll speak to you again next time. See you folks.
And here I am. Goodness knows how many millions of downloads later I'm still doing it. And I encourage you to see if you might need to improve your self talk to make sure you speak to yourself in ways that are more motivational.
Now that doesn't necessarily mean all that sort of over the top, Yeah, you can do it, I'm the best, sort of motivational messages that we can give ourselves.
You know, that might help to a degree in some situations. It might boost confidence in some respects. Providing our self esteem is high enough in the first place. Because we already believe it, but there is no point telling yourself you can do it if you actually believe you can't. Because what gets reinforced is that you're lying to yourself, and that's not a good idea, that's not something you want to become unconscious.
So, your self talk needs to be realistic. Things like, I know I've made some mistakes in the past, but I can get better. That sort of thing. There was a study once with some kids into what the organisers called instructional self talk. And what they were looking for was this sort of mental message that's even more useful than just motivational speeches.
And so they called it Instructional Self Talk. And this was with school children. Ten year old kids in P. E. lessons. Playing darts! And it was kind of like creating a running commentary. And normally we engage in this running commentary all the time, particularly if we're doing something that's quite difficult.
So this research that was done, it was with school children playing darts, to give it a three part process. So you would imagine what you had to do, visualise it in your mind, what it was you wanted to do. So you would imagine, in this case it was throwing the dart at the number you'd been given. You'd imagine throwing it, and then you'd throw it.
And then you would analyse what you did to know how to correct it if you needed to later on. So, what they did, for example, if you threw it and it was too high, you then told yourself the simple phrase, Lower next time. That was it. You just said lower next time to yourself. No judgment. No criticism, just Lower next time.
Then you visualise it again, you throw it again, and it would be a little bit lower. Because you told yourself what you needed to do. So there's always been this three part to it, where you imagine doing it, you do it, and then you analyse what you did. And this worked, because doing that was far better than the children that were just chucking darts, hoping for the best and practicing how to play and trying to learn how to get it right.
These people improved their dart score, but not just because of practice. But because of the positive self talk, because the practice only kids didn't improve anywhere near as much, and I wonder what they had in their mind. So if we're carrying out a difficult or unfamiliar task, if we're learning something new, we need to make sure that we've got a supportive, running commentary in our head.
We need to tell ourselves what we want to do. And tell ourselves what we want to do next time, afterwards. And eventually, that becomes unconscious competence, and you can do it. You don't even need to think about it anymore. That's how positive self talk should work. That's why if we catch ourselves with a negative statement, it's a good idea to stick the word yet on the end. Or maybe a question mark. I can't do that? Because then you can say, Yeah, I can. And what do you know? You can.
So, I'll leave that with you and I'll speak to you again next time. See you folks.