Awareness of debilitating self-talk depends on a few neural realities. We now know, for example that loneliness comes less from being alone and more from feeling disconnected or unworthy. We accept that we can be in a crowd and still ache with isolation. Anger often arises not from others’ mistakes but more from our struggle to regulate our emotions in response to errors made. Similarly, jealousy stems less from others’ success and more from our own longing for what they have. For similar reasons, sorrow deepens not just because of life’s disappointments but because of a lack of inner joy and resilience. Even boredom is less about the absence of adventure and more about our reluctance to seek and embrace new experiences.
We are especially vulnerable to negative emotions when relationships break down, conflicts with peers intensify, or our expectations go unmet. In these moments, our inner voice can either imprison us in negativity or set us free to grow. Clinging to toxic self-talk, ruminations steeped in doubt, fear, and self-judgment only deepens our pain. But a growth mindset offers a different path, one where our self-talk fosters adaptability, curiosity, and resilience rather than despair.
A shift in self-talk may not change our circumstances overnight, but it can change how we engage with them. It can help us step away from suffering and into self-compassion. It can give us the courage to make new choices, to persist where we once gave up, and to see opportunities where we once saw only roadblocks. The good news? We can start right now.
Daily we find ourselves facing choices where we can default to self-talk that imprisons us, or make deliberate choices for self-talk that sets us free:
Take Loneliness, where we can feel isolated and disconnected from people or situations we crave. Or we can enjoy freedom to connect and interact with other humans who add adventure and meaning to our lives. Expect to feel trapped and alone if our self-talk is along toxic inner voice lines such as, “No one truly cares about me. I don’t belong anywhere.” To step beyond these traps takes a growth mindset shift such as, “Connection is something I can create. I can take small steps to reach out and engage with others.” A growth mindset helps us to look beyond problems that trap us and act from a place of choosing new or different possibilities. Instead of retreating further into isolation, for instance, we might join a local class or group, knowing that relationships form through intentionally repeating small interactions rather than from instant bonds by accident.
The higher our Intrapersonal IQ the healthier our self-talk becomes. Test yours below:
Let’s say we face Failure or defeat and find it difficult to learn what is necessary to overcome that failure. For me that was an inability to bowl over 100. I tried for more than two years in a league to bowl consistently over 100. Unaware that my own self-talk shut down my progress, I continued inner thoughts such as, “I always mess up. I’m just not good at this.” Did you know that stress defaults us into negative self-talk statements we store into our amygdala and reuse from within the seat of our emotions. To move beyond failure it takes a growth mindset shift in self-talk such as, “Every bowling setback teaches me something valuable. I can improve with effort.” Then we retrieve one specific thing we can try differently when the ball fails to take down pins, and we try again with our self-talk possibility in mind. After struggling with a new skill, we may reflect on what didn’t work and adjust our approach rather than yielding to self-talk from frustration. Shift our self talk to, “I can do this. I’ve got this,” as we move forward with new confidence from the newly freed swing, and our growth mindset inner reboot does the rest to get our bowling ball into position to win. If we still feel the failure from so many past missteps, we can also breath deeply and hold our breath five or six times ahead of our self-talk reset. Our brains do the rest to help us exchange cortisol’s toxins into a serotonin, aha boost!
In Conflict we can advance from defensiveness into understanding and grow through engaging differences and through the openness of growth mindset self-talk. Let’s say we find ourselves triggered initially by our inner assumptions such as, “They’re against me. I have to prove I’m right.”
A growth mindset shift here may be, “There’s something to learn from different perspectives. I can listen and respond thoughtfully.” One colleague smiled and accepted the suggestion to change lanes before an intersection rather than dismiss the idea and double down in resistance. Instead of escalating an argument, he took a deep breath and asked the question, “What did you have in mind,?” to understand the other side. Another person felt angry when her inner voice demanded, “I know more about baking than she does,” in response to a friend’s suggestion she use butter instead of oil in a recipe. Anger transformed into fun anticipation however, when she shifted mindsets and asked her friend, “What new result are we going for with that change?” leading to a more constructive conversation in their shared space.
Regrets can also trigger us to tap into deliberate decisions to shift from self-blame to tangible growth. We can move beyond prisons of negative self-talk such as, “I ruined my chances. It’s too late to change.” A growth mindset shift of inner discourse may include thoughts such as, “The past informs me, but it doesn’t define me. I can make better choices here to move forward.” Going back to the poor bowling plays, for instance, a low-scoring bowler who regrets a missed opportunity might deliberately decide to seek new experiences in each frame, rather than shoot poorly and then dwell on what could have been, by an inner voice that seems to dominate with regretful words such as, “It’s too late in this game to improve my score.” At any point in the game we can shift our self talk to, “I can do this. I’ve got this,” as we increase confidence from serotonin upticks that energize our newly freed swing. It takes a deliberate shift from self-accusations to reboot our inner dialogue so the brain produces, releases and guides the serotonin fuel needed to get our bowling ball into position every time.
Another trait that holds us back is Boredom, with all its stagnation stalls in prisons, that block any new and interesting exploration. Closed-minded self-talk may hold us in prison with the conclusion, “There’s nothing interesting to do. Life is dull.” Or we may run with the growth-mindset shift such as, “Adventure is created, not found. I can try something new today.” Instead of waiting for excitement to come to them, a person takes up a new hobby, explores a different part of town, or starts an interesting creative project. Even a proposal of interest or daring alternatives can be enough to shift our inner conclusions into growth-mindset trajectories.
Conclusion: Choosing Self-Talk That Sets Us Free
The voice we listen to most often is our own, and is determined by choices we make and put into action. When self-talk is filled with self-judgment, doubt, misery and fear, it keeps us stuck, and without winning alternatives.
When our deepest self-talk reflects curiosity, courage, resilience, and self-compassion however, it leads us forward into amazing and immense possibilities. A growth-mindset reminds us that our current struggles are not our final story, any more than a consistently low bowling score is our destiny. With each small shift in self-talk, we move closer to freedom, freedom to connect, to grow, to learn, and to embrace the endless possibilities before us that get released or rejected through the words that come drenched in cortisol, or inner thoughts that embody serotonin, our brain’s “I can do this,” aha chemical.