Change Your Self Talk

We need to start paying attention to the messages we’re telling ourselves. Our self-talk is at the root of all overthinking. We are constantly justifying our actions, downplaying our achievements, and explaining away our hard work. Doing that demeans the importance of our work and our self-worth.

How we motivate ourselves matters, too, and can help us avoid overthinking things. There’s a big difference between “I can do this” and “You can do this” in our brains. Can you guess which one is more effective?

Dr. Sanda Dolcos, a researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, after completing a few studies in this area, said this:

“Self-advice expressed using ‘You’ probably enables people to adopt a broader perspective, considering how a significant other might view the event, and to reproduce the kind of encouragements previously received from others.”