Talking to Yourself .....power of mind....!

What’s the Big Idea?

Start talking to yourself to increase the performance and function of your brain. It is crazy not to talk to yourself because you would miss out on the benefits that come with self-talk. The key is to practice doing it until it becomes natural. You can use specific “cue words” in your self-talk to help you in whatever goal or task you would like to complete. Eventually, you will learn how to self-talk in a way that benefits you the most in every situation.


                   Benefits of Talking to Yourself

Think again about that time you lost your keys and started talking to yourself. Have you ever wondered why people mutter to themselves when trying to find something? According to psychologists Gary Lupyan of the University of Wisconsin Madison and Daniel Swingley of the University of Pennsylvania, talking to yourself while trying to locate something may actually help you locate it faster. To support this claim, Lupyan and Swingley published the results from an experiment they conducted in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. In the experiment, Lupyan and Swingly showed participants twenty pictures of various objects. The participants were later asked to find one of the pictures among the others. Some participants were instructed to remain silent while they searched and others were instructed to repeat the name of the thing they were looking for out loud to themselves. When the experiment concluded, Lupyan and Swingley had data that supported the idea that the participants who spoke aloud as they searched through the pictures found their objects faster. A follow up experiment was done later where participants were asked to look for things in a grocery store. As before, some were silent as they searched and others were instructed to say what they were looking for aloud. The results of the follow up came to the same conclusion as the first experiment: the people who said what they were looking for aloud to themselves found it faster.
Focus
With research such as this being done, the growing belief is that talking to yourself is very good for your attention span and focus; that it can allow you to focus on something and better ignore distractions, which is probably why muttering as you’re trying to find something helps you find it fast. Talking to yourself can also be used as a tool to learn and memorize material. Anyone who has ever needed to give a presentation or speech will tell you that talking to themselves or rehearsing what they’d like to say is a great way for them to organize their thoughts. And considering how some people learn better auditorily, muttering everything they need to learn out loud is probably the best thing for them to do. But another benefit people are slowly noticing about self talk, is that at times, it seems to be therapeutic.

Lower Stress
At Nottingham Trent University, a poll was taken among research subjects. The poll revealed that most of these subjects felt that it was legitimate to speak to others, but not to themselves. However, when these same subjects were asked to try talking to themselves, it seemed that their stress levels noticeably decreased. According to another study, athletes giving themselves motivational talks before an event lowered their anxiety and increased their confidence and performance in their event.

How can this happen? Well, talking to yourself in a positive way seems to be able to get people “psyched-up” about something which is why it could have an effect on athletes or anyone else about to do something requiring effort. It would also seem that when people take the time to say what they’re really thinking or feeling aloud to themselves, it has a similar effect to journaling; you’re able to vent any strong emotions and let out what you really think. Anyone who has kept a journal will tell you that they often feel good after writing something down. The same thing happens when you talk to yourself; you become an audible journal and suddenly you’re able to speak your mind. And when you’re feeling stressed out, sometimes a little pacing and a little pep talk or muttering is all you need to calm yourself down. Taking the time to vent out a stressful feeling or thought can tremendously help you to calm down. This is why a common sight at a job interview might be someone muttering to themselves and telling themselves to stay calm and that they’ll be all right.

Of course, speaking your mind to other people is good too but what if you’re shy or introverted? You have thoughts that still have to be said but what do you do if you’