Years ago, when I was a pharmacy student, we did formal training with various pharmacists. One of the first I worked with, Carl, talked to himself. At first, I thought he was talking to me… “Excuse me?”, I’d say. But he explained that all pharmacists talked to themselves—some just did it silently, not out loud as he did. It kept him organized, helped him focus on the work, kept him “sane”, he said, or some such words. That was over 40 years ago…
After a while, I realized I was doing it too! Talking to yourself helps you organize your mind… OK, what’s next? What problems need to be resolved? Which are most important and need to be done first? I was consciously prompting myself to get organized and concentrate on what was most important.
Not just for work...
Now I realize this works, not just for work issues, but for the rest of my life too. Especially in this time of social distancing and isolation, we need to keep ourselves going, to plan ways to connect with others, to find new ways to make things happen. This is particularly true for connecting with family and friends that are farther away who we can’t visit due to travel restrictions.
And rather than puttering away the time, waiting for COVID restrictions to be lifted (which may last months at various levels!), talking to ourselves about what we’d like to get done helps to motivate us and prioritize what is most important right now.
But beyond using self-talk to help organize activities and communications, I’ve realized that you can change your thoughts by talking to yourself. Our subconscious mind loves to pull up unpleasant thoughts from time to time and it’s easy to focus and dwell on these thoughts. But unless there is something you need to do about those thoughts, problems or situations, why not just tell yourself to move on? Think about something pleasant instead?
Brain research tells us, the more we think about something, the better we remember it. Our brains build stronger memory connections to the information we think about most. While this is a useful practice to help learn a new skill, it can work against our overall happiness if we let our brains build stronger connections to bad memories. Do we want to remember the unpleasant experiences or the happy satisfying ones? Consciously turning off thoughts of unpleasant memories and turning them toward better ones can improve our mood and overall happiness. Similarly, doing what we need to do these days to stay safe then dwelling on how to make our situation better can prevent unnecessary anxiety.
Talk to yourself about what you want to happen...
Years ago, I stumbled across a book called The Secret. The basic message of the book was: if you want something, focus on it and think about it and it will magically appear in your life. At the time, I thought this was silly…things don’t just conjure up because of thoughts. But now I think I understand the idea. When you focus on something and think about it often, it can change your actions. You do what you think about. And actions make things happen. So, thinking about your goals or desires helps to direct your actions and increases the chance of achieving what you want. It’s not 100%, of course, but if you don’t think about what you want to accomplish, you’re unlikely to take any action to get there and chances are slim that what you want will happen.
Of course, the extreme version of this type of thinking—wishing for something impossible—isn’t productive either. The idea is to stop thinking about upsetting past events that can’t be changed, enjoy the present moment for all it has to offer, and to consciously direct your thoughts and actions to creating a happier healthier future.
We’ve seen dramatic changes in our lives over that past couple of months. It’s easy to dwell on the negative side of all this, but why not talk ourselves into finding some positive. I was touched by Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York, talking about how he was creating a closer relationship with his adult children during the pandemic. Rather than a quick “How are you doing?”, then “Busy…have to go” conversation, he talked about how he was taking time to really understand how the crisis was affecting his children's lives, getting to know them better as the adults they had become. They were having conversation on a much deeper level and it was improving their relationship.
Viral change
Last week, my youngest daughter sent me a letter…a real letter on paper. We text almost every day and video chat often, but a letter is something different, something special, a surprise! It was a Mother’s Day letter that arrived late—deliveries are slow these days—and she expressed the love and pride she had for her Mama, and how much she missed being able to come to visit. She lives in Nova Scotia—and like so many, has been laid off due to the coronavirus—and the border to New Brunswick where we live is closed. So, we can’t be together, but reading her letter makes me feel closer. I’ve re-read it a lot…
She inspired me to try to give this same feeling to others…pay it forward. I decided to send some homemade cookies to my son and his family. I added a note to say how much we miss them and to ask my grandchildren to pretend that each cookie is a hug from Memere and Pepere. Today I watched a live “unboxing” video of our grandchildren opening the package, reading my note and enjoying the cookies, as my daughter-in-law connected us by video chat!
So, I think we all can talk to ourselves about how we can create something good from the forced isolation caused by the coronavirus. Life is always changing but the pandemic is forcing us to do this more quickly. Which of the changes we’ve made will we decide to keep in the future? What else can we do to make a better world and a better life for ourselves and others? We can look at this time of rapid change as a chance to improve our world and take the opportunity to consciously make good choices about our relationships, our environment, our thoughts.
Time to start talking to ourselves… to create positive changes we want and need!
