Internal Monologue: How to Develop a Positive Inner Voice

June 17, 2021 Sim Camp

In our current world, it’s so easy to let negativity lodge itself into your head.

Whether it’s the 24-hour news cycle constantly pumping out fear or the articles being passed around on social media, what you consume on a daily basis will come to define your life.

That’s why it’s so important to develop a constant monitoring of your inner monologue and gauge what you’re saying to yourself on a consistent basis.

This article will walk you through the basis of your internal monologue and how to develop a positive inner voice. You’ll also learn:

How your inner conversations create your world
The connection between your inner dialogue and your psychology
Steps to creating great inner dialogue and self-talk

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What is an Internal Dialogue, Anyway?

After examining the philosophies, the theories, and the practiced methods of influencing human behavior, I was shocked to learn the simplicity of that one small fact: You will become what you think about most; your success or failure in anything, large or small, will depend on your programming – what you accept from others, and what you say when you talk to yourself. – Shad Helmstetter, What to Say When You Talk to Yourself

Despite what some people may say, “talking to yourself” isn’t crazy. Most of us, if not all of us do it constantly. In fact, you’re doing it right now as you read this. Many people think that internal dialogue or self-talk has to be consciously thought out. On the contrary, it usually isn’t.

Your internal dialogue is a composition of the feelings, emotions, voices, and other mental phenomena that comprise your inner mental landscape. Think of it as birthmark you can’t rub off or the background noise you can’t get rid of.

Where Does Internal Dialogue Come From?

For the most part, inner monologue or self-talk usually doesn’t start developing until around the age of three in most people and that’s in an elementary form.

For the most part, this self-talk is usually of a curious nature, with it coming in the form of questions and statements as the child attempts to orient themselves to the world and their environment. This self-talk is usually neutral and very innocent.

As the child develops, they start to create more complex “mental schema”; ways of easily organizing and categorizing the environment around them into easily accessible chunks of information. This is known as a paradigm. As life continues for the individual, they start assimilating things that other people tell them about themselves into their mental landscape in order to construct their view of life. This inevitably manifests itself in their self-talk.

Unfortunately, many people had a significant amount of negative mental influences going into their subconscious mind, which inevitably influenced their “self-talk” (more like “other talk” at that point). This then becomes a habit and runs itself on autopilot, like a record player in the background.

You can go through life with negative self-talk and be relatively successful but it makes life much, much harder than it needs to be.

How Your Inner Conversations Create Your World

There’s a law in esoteric psychology that states your what you perceive as “reality” is your inner world pushed out. We all see the world in a certain way, which means we will perform certain actions in the world that will create certain observable effects in the world. Here’s a good example:

Let’s say you want to start a business. You’re pumped up, you’re excited – and why shouldn’t you be? You tell people around you that you’re doing it. They’re happy for you. You tell your parents that you’re doing it and…they’re not so thrilled. They even say:

Don’t start a business. It’s too risky. You’re not cut out for it. Why can’t you stay at your current job?

Unfortunately, this absolutely rattled your self-confidence. Then you start having doubts. But you push them aside and “go for it” anyway. However, you just can’t shake the words your parents said…After all, they’re giving you an honest opinion, right?

As the weeks go on and you work on your business, the doubts begin to pile up.

This isn’t working. Everything is going wrong.

More things start happening. Instead of spending your time working, you look up business failure rates. You see a statistic that around 50% or more of small businesses fail within 5 years. Will you be one of those 50% that succeed? Who knows?

As time goes on, the voices get louder and louder. Even with a bunch of positive encouragement around, you can’t shake the negativity. Your business ends up failing…within 2 years. Were you just another statistic? Or did your inner conversations create a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Who knows? Either way, that type of negativity didn’t help you. And this is just one example out of MANY.

How to Create Positive Inner Dialogue: 4 Crucial Steps

Orienting your inner talk to take advantage of positivity isn’t necessarily a walk in the park. In addition to being force-fed negativity every day, our thinking is hardwired into us through years of repetitive motion. It’s going to take some work to change that.

These 4 tips will get you started on the road to positive change.

1. Take Advantage of Neuroplasticity

“Neuroplasticity” is a bit of a buzzword but it’s something that describes how the brain changes itself over time. It’s how we learn new skills and develop habits that guide our life. Your inner dialogue is a function of neuroplasticity as well.

Think about it. Since a certain age, you have been socialized (programmed, rather) to talk, act, and most importantly – think a certain way. This weaves itself physically into your neuronal structure and can only be changed through consistent deliberate acts of practice.

You are going to have to practice positive self-talk. You are going to have to practice essentially being a new person.

This may sound ludicrous, like you’re faking – but in reality, you are just “visioneering” yourself as you want to be. Eventually, it will become natural and you will become that person.

Again, sounds crazy – but it works.

Implementation: Picture yourself as your highest, idealized self. Don’t think OF them, think FROM their/your perspective. How does this person walk, talk, and act? Once you think about it (write it down if you have to), BECOME them. Walk like them. Talk like them. Act like them. This will feel awkward at first but over time, it will be the most natural thing in the world – because that’s how you’re naturally like.

2. Control Your Mental Diet

The year of 2020 was chaotic to say the least. With that chaos came a whole bunch of negativity.

We humans are hardwired to care about negativity and to have a negativity bias. Why? That’s how our ancestors survived and passed on their genes. It was much more advantageous to believe that something around the corner would kill you and walk away than proceed. Even if nothing happened, if there’s a chance, you’re better off not going around that corner.

While that is great for survival (especially in times with very dangerous conditions), it’s not that great for actually thriving in the world. It also isn’t great for the modern world either, with our 24/7 access to news that constantly looks for negativity in the world just to keep you clicking.

Your mental diet will inform your self-talk and internal dialogue, which means that you need to keep it as pristine as can be.

Implementation: The theory goes “junk in, junk out”. This goes for what you eat, what you hear, and especially what you see. How can you expect to be a productive and optimistic individual when you consume the equivalent of junk food (news and social media feeds)? This doesn’t mean live in a bubble but don’t eat that shit either.

This could be paired with the last point but it’s worth mentioning all on its own because getting rid of them is a whole issue. Many people in today’s society cannot stop going on social media. It has found its way on our desktop Internet screens, on our phones, even on our television sets.

While Internet access and even social media have done many good things for our world, there are a whole host of side effects that many people may not even consciously be aware of. One of these effects is the ability to think critically. The inability to think critically and for yourself means that you are more susceptible to negative influences (which are found everywhere on the Internet).

The solution? Cut down on your use. This will be hard for many people, especially if they’ve created an entire life on the Internet – but if you want to influence your ability to create positive self-talk; it must be done.

Implementation: Make it a point of duty to decrease the amount of time you spend online each day. Rather, make it a point of duty to reduce the amount of time you spend on speculative and low value content such as news and scrolling social media. Spend a month decreasing the amount of time you spend online by 5 minutes each day. At the end of 30 days, if you do it right – you’ll have shaved about 180 minutes (3 hours) off of your Internet time. If you spend massive amounts of time on the Internet, this is definitely the direction you want to do in.

4. Script Out Positive Self-Talk

You need to be intentional with the changes you want to make in your life. One of the best ways to do so is by writing out the positive phrases you want to imbue yourself with. Your phrases should be positive, personal, and in the present tense. Here’s an example:

I am an individual with a strong work ethic and I fully deserve any and all of the rewards that are coming my way.

Another one:

I have a great circle of friends who support me and I do the same.

You can continue this for any change you want to make in your life, even ones that haven’t happened…yet.

Implementation: Get a piece of paper/notecard/journal and write out phrases you want to inform your internal monologue. Think of them as affirmations. But you can’t just do this once. You need to do it over and over again before it “sticks” and becomes automatic. Whether you write them down or verbally recite them, you need to ensure they become something that’s a part of you and a “default” that you fall back on.

Wrap Up + Conclusion

Your inner monologue is a combination of things people have told you and your judgment of what those people have told you. From a small age, we have been programmed with a variety of things, which we take and create our mental model of how the world works, and our place in it. For some people this programming was positive but for many, it was overwhelmingly negative.

These “inner conversations” we have with ourselves will in some way, shape, or form affect our actions in the real world and how we respond to it. Therefore, we need to orient our self-talk to be more positive and productive rather than negative and destructive.

There are many ways to do this but some of them involve rewiring your brain, controlling your mental diet, cutting down on social media and Internet use, and scripting out your positive self-talk.

Have you tried to change your self-talk? How did it go? Sound off in the comments.