Hello, and welcome back to Practicing Human, the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life.

I'm your host, Cory Muscara, and in today's episode, we're going to talk about a better way to do self-talk.

More to come on that in a moment. First, let's settle and together with the sound of the bells.

Okay, so there's a new book I recommend. It's called Chatter, the voice in our head, why it matters and how to harness it by the researcher Ethan Cross.

And I recommend reading the book. But one thing that stood out to me that I wanted to share in today's episode is a simple way that you can shift your inner narrative to make it more effective.

And that is simply to go from the first person to the third person. So what do I mean by that?

Well, if we think of our inner narrative in the context of maybe something that we did wrong, that we're talking to ourselves about, or something that we're preparing for, maybe we feel a certain sense of imposter syndrome, hesitancy around, you know, can I do this, should I be doing this, and we're trying to talk to ourselves in that context.

Often times, if you look at how we're talking to ourselves, we're talking to ourselves from the first person perspective. So if it's something that went wrong, we might say, what's wrong with me? Why can't I get this right? I always mess up, right? First person.

If it's something that we're trying to boost ourselves up, where we might feel a sense of being an imposter, then we might use positive affirmations, let's say, and say, I can do this. I'm great. I'm strong. I'm powerful, right? First person example.

Now, what the author, Ethan Cross, finds is that that is actually not the best way to talk to ourselves, and we're not that responsive to that kind of thinking, often it just falls completely flat.

But there's a subtle tweak that we can make that does make this much more effective. That's again, shifting from first person to third person. So what does a third person way of talking to yourself look like? Well, if something went wrong, and that initial narrative is, what's wrong with me? Why can't I get this right?

The third person orientation would be, what's wrong with Cory? Why can't Cory get this right? Now, that's still not the best way to language that sentence. I think you can take the third person perspective in a different context there and say something more long lines of, what can Cory improve here? Or what happened for Cory in this scenario?

But do you already hear the difference in that versus what's wrong with me? Or why can't I get this right? Or what do I need to do to improve? Even though what do I need to do to improve? Or how can I learn from this? That is a more positive orientation. But I feel for myself immediately when I say, how can Cory improve from this? How can Cory learn from this scenario?

Does if I step outside of myself, and I can look at myself from different vantage points, rather than just being kind of caught in my own psyche, swimming a goldfish in its own fishbowl?

And that is the power of shifting from the first person to the third person, because we tend to be much better at coaching other people.

And that's why this is particularly useful for the next example, which is if you are anticipating something difficult, or you are feeling those feelings of being an imposter or not being good enough, or I don't know if I can do this.

That's where shifting your affirmations from the first person to the third person can be really powerful.

And so this would sound like instead of, I can do this, I'm great. You might say, Cory, you got this. You've done great things before.

You've gotten through difficult things before. You've felt this in the past. Remember that? Come on, Cory. This is your time. You can step into it.

You have the resources. You have the strength. You're safe. You'll get through it.

And so when we do that, now we really are stepping into more of a coaching role. And that's what we're looking for when we try to go to our inner mind, that inner narrative.

We're looking for a coach. But from the first person perspective, it's just a little too personal and doesn't land in the same way.

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