The way you speak to yourself matters more than you might think.
Key points
- The more we engage in negative self-talk, the more we strengthen those neural pathways.
- Constant negative self-talk lowers self-esteem, motivation, and mental health, and limits our potential.
- We can retrain the brain to cultivate a kinder, more compassionate inner voice.
Most of us have a voice that plays in our heads as we move through the day—a running internal narration of our lives. If you pause and truly reflect on that inner voice, how does it tend to speak? Is it mostly kind and encouraging? Or is it mostly critical and negative?
For many people, that inner critic is loud—it’s the voice that tells you you’re not enough, undermines your capabilities, puts a spotlight on your failures and mistakes, and pushes you to think the worst about yourself.
When our internal dialogue leans negative more often than positive, it can begin to erode our self-esteem, mood, motivation, and performance. It can take a toll on our mental health, impact our relationships, and hold us back from opportunities and happiness.
Why Our Brains Default to the Negative
Our brains are hardwired to focus on the negative. The human brain has evolved to naturally pay more attention to negative information and experiences than positive ones; this is known in psychology as the negativity bias. This survival mechanism helped alert our ancestors to threats in the environment, but today, this bias to notice and dwell on the negative aspects of our circumstances and ourselves can fuel negative self-talk.
The more we engage in negative self-talk, the more we reinforce and strengthen the neural pathways associated with negative thinking. For many people, these negative thought patterns have become so deeply entrenched through repetition that the brain goes there automatically—without conscious effort.
Let’s think about that for a moment. Just like walking a trail, the more we travel the same path, the more well-defined that path will become, and the easier it will be to travel. This is the same for our thoughts. Repeated negative self-talk forms well-worn mental pathways in our brains, making it easier to return to these negative thought patterns. This shapes how we interpret our experiences, how we view the world, and how we see and feel about ourselves.
