Performance: Turbo-Charge Your Life With Powerful Self-Talk

Self-talk is the inner chatter that accompanies us in most of our waking moments. Your self-talk can be a powerful aid to your performance, or it can be destructive.

What do you say when you talk to yourself? If you’re like many of us, your self-talk is a caustic mixture of judgments, complaints, and verbal abuse, in the form of “tapes” – mental recordings – that you’ve imprinted on your mind and play over and over again. No wonder you feel down and depressed.

However, you can change the tapes you play, and your self-talk, as soon as you become aware of what you’re saying to yourself. Changing your self-talk will turbo-charge your life and enhance your performance in everything you do.

You can change your self-talk right now

Let’s try a little test. Say to yourself, silently or aloud: “That was a stupid thing to say. How could I say _________ (pick any verbal blunder you can remember). I’m so stupid.”

How do you feel? Perhaps you feel sad, or anxious. Take a moment to track your emotions in your body. Perhaps you have a sinking feeling in your tummy, or your face is becoming...