On the Power of Self-Talk

Think about the things you say to yourself, out loud or in your head. Would you ever speak to someone else that way?

A few months back, I attended a leadership training in which we role played a very unique scenario. First, we described a time when someone put a great deal of stress on us. Our partner role-played as that person and we were charged with first responding as we did at the time, and then responding after taking a deep breath and centering ourselves, in order to notice the difference.

One of the participants chose to have their partner act out their own thoughts. Much like myself, this person was more impacted by their own thoughts than any stress caused by another. In the exercise debrief, we talked about how it felt. The partner who had to act out this person’s self-berating was on the verge of tears. He talked about how hard it was for him to talk to her that way, how he imagined saying those things to his wife and it broke his heart.