Does Your Self-talk Matter?
Tara Halliday
Transformational Leadership Coach | Imposter Syndrome Specialist | Speaker and Business Book Awards Finalist
High-Performance Executive Newsletter: You're here because you have already achieved some outer success and reached your current executive leadership position. But growth doesn't have to stop here. There is a thrill and satisfaction in challenging yourself, stretching and seeing how much you can achieve. Have an impact and make a contribution.
The talents, skills and tools that have got you to this point will not necessarily take you further. Or the approaches you've used to achieve this success may have been expensive in terms of time, energy, stress and effect on your relationships. You need new or upgraded power tools to make sure you can sustain or advance your position more easily.
The High-Performance Executive Newsletter introduces these tools, so that you can level up. It draws on many areas of solid research into high-performance in business, including neuroscience, psychology, physiology, trauma therapy and flow-state study.
The three essential areas for high performance are neuro-regulation (to get and stay calm), clear the negative self-talk and the beliefs that create them (including imposter syndrome), and create new success habits.
This week we're looking at negative self-talk.
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Does Your Self-Talk Matter?
Successful entrepreneur, Alex Hormozi, launched his new book, ￡100M Leads, with a big splash this week. Unintentionally, I believe, he revealed how he talked to himself in times of stress.
‘I suck’ he writes, after being cheated by a business partner.
‘God, I suck!’ when his new business name, Impetus, is misheard as Impotence.
‘Why do I suck so much?’ when he compares his multi-millionaire status to that of a billionaire.
In the course of one book, he repeats this six times, revealing a habit of self-criticism and self-blame.
You might have noticed that not all of these are in response to his own mistakes or decisions, even. Yet he’s still attacking himself for it.
Successful Mindsets
If you believe many leadership and business guru’s books, the cause of their success is a? positive mindset; jumping out of bed every morning with a huge smile, punching the air with the thrill of a new amazing day ahead.
In my interviews with over 700 executives, I can confidently say that this is not the norm.
In fact, given that over 70% of high-achievers experience the self-doubt of imposter syndrome, critical self-talk like Alex Hormozi’s is more usual.
Not necessarily every day, or even every week. But in times of crisis, accidents and things gone wrong. That is, not only have things gone wrong, but you add self-judgement into the mix too.
Isn’t That a Good Thing?
It’s common for me to see executives and business owners defend their self-criticism. They say, ‘If I wasn’t so hard on myself I would never have pushed myself to become this successful.’
While pain and criticism can be a motivator to try harder, we cannot know that this is the cause of your success.
To know that for certain would require a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial involving a time machine or access to parallel universes. That is, impossible to prove.
This common assumption that pain is the only motivator, however, ignores the explorer motivation that is a natural part of the human spirit when we are not in pain (physical or emotional).
People often want to test themselves, to stretch and see what they can achieve. Once a skill is mastered, the fun is setting up bigger and bigger challenges to improve and deepen the skill. To answer the question 'I wonder if ...?'
This is the inbuilt desire for growth that has enabled humans to explore all regions of the world, climb the highest mountains, walk to the poles, and row across oceans. Because it’s there. Because you wanted to see if you could.
This pattern is as true in business as it is in physical challenges. A thirst for adventure is why humans are the most successful species on the planet.
Measuring the Physiology
Only philosophers could guess whether pain or adventure is the best motivator. Well, those time-travelling scientists could decide the issue too, if they existed.
However, science has established what self-talk does to your body.
Getting angry at yourself and telling yourself that you suck, a la Alex Hormozi, communicates to your brain that ‘something is wrong’. More specifically, it communicates that there is some undefined danger, or that you are at risk of being ejected from the tribe for your ‘crimes’.
The primal part of your brain understands that being cast out of the tribe would mean death, as was true during millions of years of human evolution.
As a result, your brain triggers your nervous system into fight, flight or freeze states, readying your body to survive a deadly attack.
This physiological response includes adjusting the normal flow of blood in your body. It reduces blood flow to the brain and sends it to large muscle groups, ready to respond to the threat physically.
The effects of this change in blood flow are significant. With less oxygen and nutrients, the logical thinking and strategic planning part of your brain, your prefrontal cortex, literally does not have the resources to operate at its best.
Your decision-making ability is reduced, your creativity drops by 50%, your ability to regulate your emotions is diminished and you become more impulsive, anxious, aggressive or emotionally reactive. Your communication with others loses empathy and tolerance. Furthermore, your IQ temporarily drops by 13 points.
All in all, your ability to perform at your best is compromised. Precisely at a time when you want to be able to navigate the crisis well!
If only for this change in your physiological capacity, I conclude that negative, critical self-talk is harmful to your success.
What about those who do this and yet have achieved great things?
I would say they have achieved that success despite the dragging anchor of negative self-talk and the decreased resourcefulness that creates.
Time-travelling scientists alone know how much more they might have achieved if they’d tapped into more positive, resourceful motivations.
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领英推荐
What I've loved this week:
Rediscovering Books
This week a friend recommended two books to me. I enjoy reading a lot of books, so I jumped to order them immediately. I was surprised when Amazon told me I had bought them both two years ago, and that they still sat in my Kindle library.
I’ve had books sit on shelves for years until I was ‘ready’ to read them. Or like these two, I’d read them at a time when they were merely mildly interesting. This time around, both books seemed packed with critical information that would be a big help. What a delight!
Do you ever find that with books?
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An action step you can do this week…
Shift the Focus
You may have guessed that this week’s action step involves watching your self-talk, especially when under pressure.
If you do notice yourself being self-critical then stop and take a step back.
Separate your judgement of the situation into two; your actions/the events and your value/worth as a person.
By all means, reflect on what was done, but don’t indulge in personal self-criticism.
The value of doing this comes when you notice the difference it makes to you. If successful, you will remain calmer, in control and at full capacity to respond well.
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We'll cover more on negative self-talk in future issues.
Do subscribe and share!
I'm Dr Tara Halliday, specialist Imposter Syndrome Coach.
I've been a holistic therapist and high-performance coach for over 22 years.
I'm the creator of the premium Inner Success for Execs programme - the fastest and best solution to imposter syndrome.
My new book, Outsmart Imposter Syndrome will be out in two weeks!
I’ve recorded a sneak peek preview – a video of me reading the first chapter in the book.
Take a look here: https://youtu.be/psGJBjaF7XE
Check out the Inner Success for Execs programme for fast 'up levelling' of your internal leadership tools.
Think you may have imposter syndrome? Take this free quiz to find out:
Want to fast-track and have a chat about your inner success, book a quick 15-minute call here:
Have an excellent, refreshing and recharging weekend!
Tara
P.S. Thank you for reading to the end of the newsletter, please leave a comment if you've found this useful or thought-provoking because it lets me know what resonates and I can write more about it. And it can challenge my thinking too, which is always good!
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