Stop Talking to Yourself

Kyle Says Hi,

Stop talking to yourself.

Start talking about yourself.

I was reading a little Steve Magness the other day, and he talked about this study on self-talk that has been bouncing around my brain for two days.

The efficacy of self-talk is not just impacted by how positive or negative the narrative is, but also the perspective in which your self-talk presents.

When you speak (to yourself) in the first person, I/me, positive self-talk gives you a marginal increase in odds of the task getting completed.

When you speak in the third person, Kyle, positive self-talk greatly increases your chances of completing a task.

The context is obviously in the context of a difficult challenge, but just wanted to make sure that was clear.

I also would be remiss if I didn’t mention that your odds are even greater if you refer to yourself as someone who you believe is even stronger than yourself (think Iron Man or Batman).

This is really just the primer for this newsletter today. The real lesson for today is about perspective, less about the talk.

When you are speaking to yourself in the first person, you are self-immersed.
When you are speaking to yourself in the third person (or like Spiderman), you are self-distanced.

The power of this shift is that you are looking at the problem outside of the bubble of your life.

This probably happens every time you get into a group and you start talking about your day-to-day problems. You realize that everyone deals with similar types of things; it makes the problems feel smaller... makes them feel weak.

The Hero’s Journal

Today is all about bragging… not actually, but I am going to talk about why The Hero’s Journal works.

Whenever I tell someone what I do for work, they look at me like I am an alien. In their head, there is no way that we sold 120,000 of these journals.
It sounds like a lie… and trust me, I get it.

But here is the thing: when I tell people what I do, the focus goes onto the journals. There is rarely a person who understands why it worked.

The reason why it works is because the core of the product is to take thoughts out of your head and put them into an entirely new world.

When you are doing the mental calculation of your daily tasks, you are saying, “I have to do this, I have to do that, oh that is going to suck.”

When you put them onto a piece of paper, the first transformation has taken place. They go from a dynamic thing in your head to a static task on the paper.

That’s not specific to The Hero’s Journal; that’s journaling.

So why The Hero’s Journal?

Have you ever noticed that the name of the company isn’t plural?

It’s possessive. Owning this journal forces you to claim ownership of your personal heroism.

It shifts the perspective from I can do this to a hero must do this.

You are both not using the first person, and you are using the “Batman” version of self-talk.

You are both self-distancing, and you are shifting the narrative from I/me to Hero.

The Hero’s Journal doesn’t sell because we have found the perfect blend of paper, glue, and ink. The Hero’s Journal sells because owning it reaffirms something about yourself that is very important: you are a Hero.

Atypical

One of my favorite things to do is read the comments on Trey’s videos. There is a smattering of comments, but the ones you can always count on:

“I am a youth basketball player in (country). I want to be like you” (or some other variation of that).

Having someone to look up to—someone who has shown that they can do it, someone who is going out of their way to show you how to do it—is a lot more impactful than just knowing drills. It is giving someone to emulate when the moment feels too big.

For me, in my running journey, I felt this way about Steve Prefontaine. Our freshman and sophomore times were almost the same. He and I are about the same height, and I shared a common ideology: I am going to allow myself to hurt more than anyone else.

When I was in the pain cave, I wasn’t Kyle; I was the next Prefontaine.

Reading

This may come as a shock, but I was reading Do Hard Things again this week by Steve Magness. I really like it (as I previously stated).

Coffee

I started playing around with my espresso ratios this week. I normally do 19g of coffee to 40g of espresso. Today, I did 17g to 30g for a more espresso-ey shot. It was pretty good; made the syrup pop a little more.

Conclusion

This newsletter has a few lessons.

When you are selling something, sell something deeper than product specs.
Try to pop the bubble around your perspective.

The most important lesson, which I never explicitly stated: if you are going to use the third person to hype yourself up, you need to start the painstaking process of thinking positive things about yourself.

If I didn’t think Kyle has what it takes to accomplish a task, telling myself “Kyle can do this” doesn't actually help.

When you are self-distanced and are looking at yourself in the third person, you have to teach yourself to like what you see.

Have a good weekend,
Me