Self-Talk
"the internal dialogue or running monologue you have with yourself, whether spoken aloud or kept silent in your mind"
“If you can’t do this what the fuck else are you going to do in life. Hit this rep, otherwise you really are useless. Come on you prick.”
As I sit here now and hear myself read those words out loud, they sound extreme and almost absurd but that was my reality, my self-talk, for a long time. Once I began to take my practice more seriously it became a large part of my life and my identity. My self-talk whilst I would practice became by and large very negative. Those thoughts regularly passed through my head, and I really did hold onto them, identify with them. I fell in love with a practice and shortly thereafter it (myself) began to punish me. So miserable it eventually made me that if I wanted to continue, I knew I had to look for remedies to the malady. There must be another way…
How would you speak to and support a best friend? Let’s imagine your best friend in your situation, doing what you’re doing. What do you tell them? Do you tell them that if they don’t make that rep perfectly, they are a useless piece of shit? It’s highly unlikely. You’re much more likely to motivate and encourage them. “Good job man, keep going. You got this, you’re doing what matters”.
The person you will most converse with in your life is yourself. Every day, many, many hundreds of times a day. The manner and tone of that conversation will radically impact your experience of life.
How much more pleasant would your experience be if we could change that narrative and instead, replace those berating and demoralizing conversations you have with yourself with the dialogue that you would direct toward your friend?
To this day I remember the very moment that I heard a psychologist talk about the above three points and the concept of treating yourself as you would a best friend… I was blown away by the power of such a slight reframe. I wouldn’t dream of speaking to my friends the way I speak to myself.
At first, it felt silly. I found myself feeling awkward during training sessions. I would notice that voice creeping up on me, the devil some people call it, the dictator others, and I would remind myself of the pact I had made: “This rewiring has to be intentional, say it out loud…”
“You’ve got this. You’ve done hard things before, this is just another rep”, thinking of what I would say to my best friend and saying it out loud. “Honestly man, you’ve absolutely got this, you fucking got this”.
Sometimes just the words themselves would make me chuckle and smile. Sometimes they would make me cringe. Yet, I noticed that I was able to perform just as well, if not better and it the sensations grew to become pleasant. It felt good to support and encourage myself.
Of course that’s not to say that all of a sudden my inner dialogue is this bliss of encouraging conversation but I am able to recognise that bastard (Barry I call him) when he gets a bit spicy and I am able to come back to who and what most benefits me in the moment – which is almost always being generous with myself, encouraging and compassionate.
I’d been hostile with myself because I believed otherwise, I wouldn’t be capable – a line of thought that I know now was born of fear, a fear that I’m not good enough. As is often the case in life, for years I had confused correlation with causation. Self-criticism was present whilst I was progressing. I had concluded that it was causal to my success and that otherwise I would be soft, complacent or lazy. I could train longer and harder than most people because I could sustain the self-criticism. Those were my conclusions. Now the more interesting question was becoming what might happen if I stop assuming self-criticism is necessary?
I know I am not alone in this experience. Perhaps you too are mistaking self-criticism for the source of your discipline and success? Perhaps, like I did, you have confused correlation with causation, assuming hostility is integral to your growth because you can’t remember one without the other. But what if your standards are just as high without the criticism? What if fear isn’t necessary and what if you're actually far more capable than you actually think?