There’s something I say in my house constantly. My kids have heard it probably 10,000 times. I say it to clients and I say it to myself: watch your mouth. And I don’t mean don’t swear. I swear a ton. I mean watch what you’re saying about yourself, because your brain is always listening, and it takes what you say as truth.

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An event is not an identity

If one of my kids says, “I’m terrible at math,” I stop them. Not because I want anyone walking around being toxically positive. If you failed the math test, you failed the math test. That’s a fact, and we can talk about what to do about it. But “I failed a math test” and “I’m bad at math” are not the same statement. One describes something that happened. The other describes who you are.

We do this to ourselves all day long:

• “I’m an inconsistent person.”
• “I’m bad with money.”
• “I’ve never been disciplined.”
• “I can’t stick to anything.”
• “I’m always late.”
• “Oh girl, I could never pull that off.”

A lot of these we say as jokes. Everyone laughs and the conversation moves on. But those things stack up. If you’ve been saying some version of the same thing about yourself for 5, 10, 20 years, that’s worth looking at. In terms of neuroscience, you’re rehearsing an identity.

This is not about fake positivity

I’m not telling you that saying “I’m so tired” programs you to be exhausted forever. And I’m definitely not telling you to replace every honest thought with “I am a radiant goddess overflowing with vitality” when you’ve had a terrible day and just want everyone out of the house so you can sit in front of Netflix. Your brain isn’t stupid. It knows.

I’m talking about the patterns in your language over time. What comes out automatically? Especially when you’re frustrated? You miss a workout and it becomes “See, I can’t do this.” You overspend and it’s “I’m bad with money.” You lose your patience and suddenly “I’m a terrible mom.”

Something happened, babe. That’s it. A behavior happened. An emotion happened. And within three seconds you turned it into a whole identity. That’s the part I want you to start catching.

Why your words matter so much

This isn’t just me telling you to watch your mouth like you’re one of my kids. There are entire areas of psychology studying this.

Listen to great athletes talk about the mental side of what they do. They are incredibly intentional about what they rehearse, how they visualize, and how they talk to themselves under pressure. They’re not spending the hours before a game rehearsing “I’m probably going to choke.”

• Self-talk and performance: One review looked at 32 studies on self-talk and athletic performance and found self-talk interventions had a positive effect. The athletes who were actually trained in self-talk showed much stronger effects than the ones just trying to stay positive on their own.
• Naming emotions: In a UCLA brain imaging study, people who put a negative emotion into words showed reduced activity in the amygdala. The image didn’t change. The emotion didn’t change. Putting it into language changed the brain’s response.
• Using your own name: Researchers found that thinking about an upsetting experience in the third person (“Why is Allie freaking out about this?”) instead of “Why am I freaking out?” created distance and lessened the emotional impact. One word.

None of this means one negative sentence will destroy your life. But taken together, there’s plenty of reason to stop treating the way you talk to yourself like it doesn’t matter. I say it to my kids all the time: there’s a reason it’s called spelling.

Which version of you gets the microphone?

High performers rehearse the person they need to be before there’s external evidence they’re her yet. Most of us do the opposite. We say we want to become someone new, and then we spend all day narrating evidence for the old version. “See, I always do this.” “I have no discipline.”

Then we’re confused about why the new identity feels so far away. Of course it does. You barely let her speak. You hand the microphone to the old identity all day long.

Your conscious mind makes promises and goals. Your subconscious keeps patterns. You can consciously want to become consistent while verbally rehearsing “I’m an inconsistent person.” You can decide you’re changing your relationship with money while joking, “I went hard on Amazon again, I’m so bad with money, lol.” That’s the contradiction I want you to hear.

Catch it, separate it, recode it

1. Catch it. For the next 24 hours, get obnoxiously interested in your own language. Not anxious. Interested. Listen especially for what comes after “I am,” “I always,” “I never,” “that’s just how I am,” and “I can’t.” Those are identity phrases. Don’t fix them yet. Just notice.

2. Separate it. Ask yourself: is this who I am, or is this something I’ve done, felt, or struggled with? You are not what you do. You are not your mistakes. And you are not your house.

• “I’m bad with money” becomes “I’ve made financial decisions I don’t like.”
• “I’m lazy” becomes “I’ve been avoiding this, and sometimes I avoid things that feel overwhelming.”
• “I have no discipline” becomes “I haven’t built consistency with this yet.”

Don’t make it positive. Make it accurate. If you make it positive when you don’t believe it, you’re just lying to yourself in a prettier direction, and your brain knows.

3. Recode it. Decide what you’ll rehearse instead. It needs to be believable enough that your brain doesn’t reject it, and it needs to point in the direction you’re going.

• Old: “I always quit.” Accurate: “I’ve quit things before.” Recode: “I’m learning to return to the plan instead of starting over.”
• Old: “I’m inconsistent.” Accurate: “Consistency has been hard for me.” Recode: “Every time I return to the plan, I’m practicing consistency.”
• Old: “I’m not confident.” Accurate: “I don’t feel confident in this yet.” Recode: “I’m practicing doing things before I feel completely ready.”

We’re not denying reality. We’re changing what we keep making reality mean about us.

Your assignment

Make a note in your phone called Watch Your Mouth. For the next 24 hours, every time you catch an identity statement, throw it in there. Don’t try to catch every single one. Tomorrow, pick the three that show up the most or feel the most loaded, and write out:

1. What I say
2. What’s true
3. What I’m rehearsing now

Then start correcting yourself in real time. “I always quit.” Nope. “I quit this time. What happened?” Get data. Let’s be smart, not toxic.

The other 15 hours of your day

We put so much focus on the five minutes of affirmations, the 10 minutes of EFT, the visualization, the journal prompt. I love all of those. They move the needle. But what are you rehearsing about yourself the rest of the day?

Please don’t leave here scared that every negative thing you say is rewiring your brain. That’s not the message. The message is: listen. Your language is a window into what you believe about yourself. And once you can hear the old identity, you finally have something to work with.

Come to my free class

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Watch the full episode of The Purpose Show here.