What’s your self talk like?
So you fucked up. You did something you told yourself you weren’t going to do. You strayed from your goal. You placed greater priority on something that ultimately didn’t matter. You failed at a task you should have succeeded at. When you look back to see an ocean of regret.
Pause.
What’s your self talk like?
If you’re anything like me two years ago, it can get nasty pretty quick. The line, “Gilbert, you’re such a fucking idiot, why the fuck did you do that,” followed by some mental visualization of physical abuse to myself was pretty standard day to day stuff.
Talking to a couple of my friends, it didn’t seem like it was that farfetched either, plenty of my high achieving buddies spend lots of time beating themselves up. Doesn’t everybody do this?
Turns out, no, not everybody goes out of their way for self flagellation, and there’s a way to criticize yourself without lighting your self-worth on fire.
Peter Attia’s Abusive Self Talk
It wasn’t until recently that I started learning that it was very possible to change your own self talk. If you listen to Peter Attia on the Huberman lab podcast when he’s summarizing his book, “Out Live,” he explains the last chapter which covers emotional health.
Emotional health is a challenging topic for Peter Attia. This is a man who’s been ultra successful in finance and in the medical field, and he can show you the objective measurements that prove he’s excellent at what he does. Ergo, the man likes numbers. Numbers provide concrete data that provide the illusion of certainty. Want to improve your VO2 Max? You can measure that. Want to improve the strength of a joint? You can measure that. Want to improve your relationship to yourself?
…That’s actually far more difficult to measure objectively.
Despite his attachment to the reality of numbers, when he covers the chapter on the podcast he reveals an eye opening account of how he would talk to himself during a practice session of archery. If he missed the bullseye by a ring or two his inner monologue would descend upon him like a drill sergeant disgusted with an unknowing rookie, “What the fuck was that Peter? Why don’t you actually focus instead of being a total fucking piece of shit. Be better you fuck.”
This voice was not relegated to archery. He would abuse himself until he achieved perfection in whatever he was doing, whether it be studying medicine or slicing an onion. While he admits this way of treating yourself can actually work if you measure success in terms of dollar amounts and status, it doesn’t take much extrapolation to see that a person who treats themselves like complete shit eventually treats the people around them like complete shit.
This abusive perfectionist thinking led to explosive anger that almost led to the ruination of his marriage and family.
When he sought therapy, his doctor informed him that until he changed the way he talked to himself, he wasn’t going to be able to heal the rifts he had caused within his marriage. He originally told the doctor that this was an impossible task. “Doc, I’m a 50 year old man, and I’ve been talking to myself this way ever since I’ve had working memory. It’s the reason I’ve achieved so much.”
“And the reason you’ve lost so much,” the doctor said gently.
Then the doctor revealed an exercise that changed the way Peter thought, and it has had an incredible impact on my own life as well.
For Peter, it went like this. He was required to carry around a tape recorder, and every time he was about to yell at himself himself he was required to say those abuses out loud into the tape recorder. But here’s the catch. Instead of critiquing himself, he was required to critique himself as if he was talking to his best friend Jim.
For example, let's return to the archery example. If Peter missed a shot and responded to himself, he would unleash a barrage of abusive language upon himself. But if he was shooting arrows with Jim, and Jim missed a shot, Peter would never respond to his best friend that way. He would simply say, “that’s alright Jim, when you go for the next one just try exhaling your breath and then holding it until you take the shot, I think your breathing interrupted the shot.” Kind, productive feedback. Peter had to pretend that he was responding to Jim into the tape recorder.
Within 6 months of actively recording his voice and reviewing his self-talk with his therapist, Peter was able to change the automatic abusive responses to himself into caring yet useful reviews. These eventually became automatic responses. He refers to this change as the most visceral example of neural plasticity that he’s ever experienced.
His marriage and family life subsequently improved.
The Changes in My Own Self Talk
I was initially skeptical when I heard this - you could actively change your own self talk? You could alter the way the demon’s in the back of your own mind interacted with you?
Let me be clear - I’m a fairly happy camper. I find meaning in my work, and enjoy trying to find the joy in hard things to do…but I’m human. I’ve got my own collection of regrets and anxieties that haunt me on a hungover Sunday the same as everybody else. From a 9 year relationship that didn’t work to a hovering question of when will I finally move out of the parents house…I’ve spent a fair amount of my time beating myself up over past decisions made.
Without going into all the gory details, by the age of 30 I had a habit of mental self flagellation based on a couple solid regrets…I kind of thought it was normal. However, it happened often enough that I was getting tired of my own torture, and I had contemplated talking to a therapist.
When I heard Peter Attia’s story I decided to make an active decision to try this technique before committing money and time toward something I felt I didn’t actually need. I wasn’t going to use a tape recorder…but I was going to force myself talk to act as if I was my own best friend.
For whatever reason, this exercise came fairly easy to me, likely because I don’t have anywhere near the levels of self hatred and need for perfection that Peter Attia has. When I would go down the usual rabbit hole of beating myself up over some past behavior performed in a past relationship I would actively stop the thought, imagine myself sitting next to me, (handsome devil that he was) and then that self would walk me through the basics of why I made the decisions I made.
He would usually say the following thoughts.
“Hey man, it’s alright, you weren’t honest in your relationship because you weren’t honest with your own emotions…and that was because you didn’t know how to be. It’s a learning process.”
“Hey man, we don’t talk that way to ourselves, we accept criticism, but shame is no longer acceptable. We’re here to get better.”
I eventually learned to fall in love with the quote from Maya Angelou that my imaginary self would often whip out, “you can’t beat yourself up for not knowing what you didn’t know at the time,” …even if you felt like you should have.
Anytime a regret would form, and I attempted to yell at myself in my own head, I would visualize myself talking to my emotions and turning the volume down on the self hate and turning the volume up on how I should try to improve from those situations. Like Peter Attia’s story, these responses became automatic, and I perform them on the regular to this day.
If it’s weird that I’m talking about an imaginary friend that looks like me (is me) and actively walks me through my own regrets, that’s likely because it is. The fact that I literally imagine an image of myself walking me through my own bullshit may in fact be weird enough to turn a couple you off of this blog.
But I share this because it’s an exercise that makes me better - and by extension it makes my students better. Having an exercise that helps me navigate all the unbidden thoughts that swirl around my head gives me a much better frame of how to talk to a student who’s letting their own emotions ruin their day. I imagine it applies to anyone who needs to navigate important relationships in their lives - which is everyone.
I’m in no way a phycologist, and I imagine developing an inner voice that says the right things is dependent upon a whole lot of other external training. But I encourage you to give it the ole college try. The next time you attempt to beat yourself up, pause, and imagine you’re talking to your best friend who just messed up. What would you say to them? You might be surprised at how effective it is.
I’ll end with a quote from Miyamoto Musashi…and leave you with that.
“Do not speak badly of yourself. For the warrior within hears your words and is lessened by them.”
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