2 Ways to Use Your 'Negative Self-Talk' to Your Advantage

Key points

People often assume that negative self-talk is harmful and serves no purpose.

But negative self-talk can sharpen focus and drive when it leads to self-correction rather than self-blame.

Positive self-talk is often beneficial, but when taken to extremes, it can also produce overconfidence.

A 2021 study published in Scientific Reports explored how the way we talk to ourselves, either positively or negatively, impacts brain function and cognitive performance. Researchers used fMRI brain scans and a problem-solving test to compare two types of self-talk. The findings from the study were two-fold:

Negative self-talk was found to have a positive impact and lead to better performance on the second round of the test. This happened possibly because it created a state of height