Book Report: “What To Say When You Talk To Your Self”

The book “What To Say When You Talk To Your Self” was written by Shad Helmstetter and first published in 1986. Since its publication, the book has been updated in 1991 and 2011 with new findings from the field of brain research and neuroscience. The book is around 225 pages long and falls in the category of self-help and personal growth.

The author, Shad Helmstetter Ph.D., is a best-selling author, public speaker, trainer of certified self-talk trainer, and has appeared on many radio and TV programs. Dr. Helmstetter is considered one of the pioneers in the field of self-talk and continues to contribute to the research of human behavior with the mind/brain foundation of success.

I chose to read this book because it was suggested to me by my trusted coach. I dove right into the book and read it cover to cover within a few days.

What Is It All About?

The book is a summary of the author’s research on self-talk. Dr. Helmstetter’s research was motivated by his observations in the space of self-help, personal growth, and success teachings. Studying this space, he learned many amazing strategies, concepts, and principles for success. However, he was humbled to see how few people (including himself) could stick with what they learned; in other words, the results were almost always temporary. The lasting change was the exception.

This led Dr. Helmstetter to investigate the issue and thus began his research in this field, which ultimately led him to the domain of self-talk. The author was surprised to come across a simple fact that held true in all areas of life: We become what we think about most.

This became even clearer as many of the assumptions about self-talk could later be backed up by science through research on the brain and research in neuroscience.

The main takeaway is that our most dominant thoughts are physically wired into the brain. The human brain is a powerful biochemical computer.

To quote the author: “This is not a success theory, this is a scientific fact: By an incredibly complex physiological mechanism, a joint effort of body, brain, and mind, we become the living result of our own thoughts.”

Consequently, lasting change in our behavior requires the following: The new idea (or message) has to become physically wired into the brain’s neural network. This is achieved by making a new idea (or message) your new dominant thought. In other words, changing your self-talk to repeat the message daily.

In most people’s lives, their self-talk has been determined by their surroundings:

• Parents
• Friends
• Work
• Media
• And other influences

Research in human behavior suggests that on average, 75% of our thoughts are negative. By taking responsibility for our self-talk, and consciously choosing our own thoughts, we can override any old programming.

The consequence is that old, negative thoughts are eliminated from the brain’s neural network and replaced with new, positive thoughts. Neuroscientists have observed this process in brain research and I have found other scientists and psychologists on the internet who confirmed it, as well.

At its heart, the book wants to help us change our behavior for the better. As the author correctly suggests, we all have areas of life that we want to improve but what influences our behavior?

Dr. Helmstetter explains the process like this:

1. Behavior: Our behavior is what we do or do not do. Behavior means our actions. Our actions are controlled by our feelings.
2. Feelings: Every action we take is first filtered through our feelings. How we feel about something determines whether we do it or not. Our feelings also affect how we act, and how well we do it. In simple terms: If we don’t like to do something, then we either don’t do it at all or we do it badly. Our feelings are directly determined by our attitudes.
3. Attitudes: Our attitudes are the perspective from which we view life. If we have a positive attitude towards something, we will experience positive feelings. If we have a negative attitude towards something, we will experience negative feelings. We get our attitudes from our beliefs.
4. Beliefs: What we believe about anything will determine our attitudes about it. Belief is so strong that something can appear to us differently than what it is. The shocking part about belief is that something does not have to be true for us to believe it. If something is our belief, it becomes our reality – whether it’s true or not is irrelevant to our subconscious mind. Our beliefs are directly created by our mental programming.
5. Programming: We believe what we are programmed to believe. Our programming is the sum of our most dominant thoughts. What we accept from the outside world and what we tell ourselves becomes our mental programming.

Understanding the step-by-step process above makes apparent how, ultimately, all our behavior depends on our mental programming. And as scientists have had breakthroughs in brain research and neuroscience, we now know that the words we tell ourselves are physically wired into the neural network.

This is why this book promotes the practice of daily, positive self-talk. It is the simplest and most effective method to override our most dominant thoughts, change our mental programming, and improve our behavior.

The book goes into great detail to explain what self-talk exactly is, and what it is not. It also makes clear that simply saying a few positive phrases does not have enough of an effect. Self-talk must be very detailed and repeated as often as possible, every day. Self-talk isn’t just a few phrases; it is the description of a complete picture of what it is that we desire.

To help us implement, Dr. Helmstetter gives us five different methods for using self-talk:

1. Silent self-talk: This is our internal dialogue.
2. Self-speak: Things we say out loud to ourselves or someone else.
3. Self-conversation: This is a method where we engage in a kind of roleplay, where we ask ourselves a question and we answer it ourselves aloud. We have a conversation out loud with ourselves.
4. Self-write: This is the kind of self-talk that we write out, word for word, for ourselves.
5. Recorded self-talk: This is the method where we listen to pre-recorded, positive self-talk. We can record the phrases ourselves or we can buy them from a self-talk expert.

The author highly suggests the method of recorded self-talk. According to his experience after years of research and teaching in this field, he has found recorded self-talk to be the fastest and most efficient method to change a person’s programming. For this method to work, we should listen to the recorded self-talk every morning and every evening before sleeping, for 15 minutes each.

Finally, a crucial element of successful self-talk is to first identify our negative self-talk. Only when we catch ourselves saying something that works against us, can we change the wording to something positive. That’s why the first step to improvement is to start monitoring our own words. And every time we catch ourselves thinking or saying something negative, we must immediately turn it around to something positive.

Example: “I just can’t seem to lose weight.” becomes “Losing weight is not a problem for me. I eat exactly what I should and only the right healthy amount. I’m losing weight and looking great.”

It takes determination and consistency to always monitor, change our thoughts for the better, and then repeat the words silently or out loud. But when sticking to it, it will change our mental programming and finally erase our old, negative beliefs, attitudes, feelings, and actions.

Evaluation And Conclusion

The book’s biggest strength is how it ties personal growth to science. Seeing how research has been able to confirm self-talk physically rewiring our neural network is what allowed me to drop virtually all internal resistance and motivated me to take self-talk seriously. Furthermore, once I’ve seen Ph.D. psychologists and other scientists on the internet attest to the same research, I was able to accept this as fact: I am what I think.

I have been reading about positive thinking and personal growth for many years but this book has opened my eyes to the missing component: The vocabulary. Dr. Helmstetter compares learning self-talk to learning foreign languages. If a native English speaker wants to speak French, he first needs to learn the vocabulary. It is the same with negative and positive self-talk. Someone who only knows negative self-talk does not have the vocabulary of positive self-talk, it is quite literally a different language.

That’s why listening to pre-recorded self-talk has helped so many people. Instead of struggling to find the right words to think and say, we can copy the words from a happy, healthy, and successful person. There are dozens of examples of positive self-talk in the book, which I have read out aloud and recorded myself. These recordings are now on my phone and I listen to them every morning and every evening.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone, no matter at what stage in life they currently are.

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