A Solitary Toast to Achievement

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You've done it before. Found yourself muttering in the grocery aisle while you compared prices, spoke under your breath while you exercised, or grumbled while you struggled with technology. Everyone does it. Self-talk, or intrapersonal communication, as it may be known by psychologists and behaviourists, is as basic a component of our lives as is simple respiration. But how big of a role does self-talk play? How does this intrapersonal communication impact our daily function? Or our psyche? And if this impact is somehow significant, how pivotal is it? Research and a plethora of experts speak to the impact that self-talk can have.

But first, what is self-talk exactly? After all, schizophrenia is known as producing symptoms where the afflicted speak out loud to themselves; how is this distinguishable from self-talk? While at first glance the malady appears not dissimilar to the potentially healthy habit, the two are, from a psychological and behavioural standpoint, quite separate. Intrapersonal communication is the act of speaking to oneself as a form of critical thinking, reinforcement, or analysis and summary of a situation. Meanwhile, mental abnormalities such as schizophrenia cause the afflicted to project illusory structures, which are not supported by logic nor their senses, into their world. This usually results in a pressure on the afflicted to justify his actions, and when he does so verbally, he is not vocalizing his cognition, but rather appeasing external structures from an internal source, instead of simply using the vocalization of thought to better represent a situation, as do healthy intrapersonal communicators. Therefore, there is little correlation between actually speaking to yourself and being afflicted with a...

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...we use on ourselves have twice as much power as do any others.

Works Cited

W. Brewer, Britton, Johnathon Kozimor, Brian P. Lewis, Darwyn E. Linder, Judy L. Van Raalte, and Gregg Wildman. "Cork! The effects of positive and negative self-talk on dart throwing performance ." Journal of Sport Behavior March, 1995. 50. General OneFile. Database. 3 Feb 2012.

Scott, Brian. "How to improve your life by better managing your self-talk." Psychology Matters. Psychology Matters, 11 Nov 2011. Web. 2 Feb 2012.

Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird. 1st Anchor Books ed. New York: Anchor Books, 116-121. Print.

Monitor your "self-talk". 2011. Photograph. ChangeU.net

Cross, Darryl. "Confidence." How to Stop Your Self-Sabotage. Confidence, n.d. Web. 12 Feb 2012.

Helmstetter, Shad, writ. The Story of Self Talk. Life Coach Institute, 2008. Web. 12 Feb 2012.

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