How Understanding Self-Talk Can Improve Your Communication and Achieve Better Results
- Brainz Magazine
- Oct 20
- 6 min read
Written by Carol Passemard, Executive Coach & Mentor
Carol Passemard is in the business of transforming lives. Her aim is to help clients discover their gifts, skills, and talents so they can make a difference in their own lives. Carol founded Breakthrough Retreat 20 years ago as a trainer in Neurolinguistic Programming, Timeline Therapy®, and Hypnosis. She is registered with ABNLP and ABH.
Are we losing our senses? Discover why it is important to keep our senses active, what they specifically mean to us, and how we can develop them to transform our communication skills and achieve the best results in both the workplace and your home life.
Talking to self
Do you ever find yourself talking inside your head, to nobody but yourself? If you do, and that conversation is negative, do you create pictures around what that scenario might look like? You might even imagine sounds attached to the images. Then, how does that make you feel, horrible?
Let's change the dialogue. Suppose you have a debate inside your own mind where everything is going well. If not, you consider how you can make changes. As a result, you look to the future, create images that make you feel excited and happy, and become motivated to do whatever it takes to achieve a satisfactory outcome.
You see all kinds of possibilities and opportunities. You hear encouragement from everyone around you. Then, how does that make you feel, fantastic?
So what makes the difference?
Let’s go back to the communication model. Cleverly developed to help us understand the way we use our senses to create our own model of the world.
During parts one and two, we explored the communication model and all our natural senses:
Visual
Auditory
Kinaesthetic
Gustatory
Olfactory
In our third part, we explore another sense. It is not a natural sense but one common to all humankind, talking to self, sometimes known as audio-digital.
Why is this important to understand?
It is the way we conduct our lives. The words that come out of our mouths have an impact on the results we get when conversing with another human being.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where there is a lot of outside ‘noise’. We become distracted and get in the way of having meaningful communication.
What does that mean to us?
When we focus on our aims, we are more likely to achieve a satisfactory result. We need to understand our own model of the world. Our memories, attitudes, decisions, and the language we use affect the way we communicate. Remember, we are all unique beings. Nobody has identical experiences to our own. Be mindful of that. The language we use is critical to achieving the outcomes we desire.
If we’re involved in a discussion with someone who is very visual, it’s important to use visual words in order to gain rapport with them. If the individual is kinaesthetic and tells you how they are feeling, and you respond using only visual words, you will achieve nothing. There will be a breakdown in communication.
The same goes for someone who is auditory. They will sit and listen to you ad infinitum, however, they might not see the pictures you are painting with your visual words or feel the same way you do.
Listening skills are important in order to understand the language being used. The following example demonstrates this:
Could you just listen?
“When I ask you to listen and you start giving me advice, you have not done what I asked. When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why I should not feel that way, you are trampling on my feelings. When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problems, you have failed me, strange as that may seem.
Listen! All I ask is that you listen, not talk or do, just hear me. Advice is cheap. When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear and inadequacy, but when you accept as a simple fact that I do feel what I feel no matter how irrational, then I can stop trying to convince you and get down to the business of understanding it.
Irrational feelings make sense when we understand what’s behind them. And when that’s clear, the answers are obvious and I don’t need advice.
Perhaps that’s why prayer is so important for some people, God listens and stays with us, but doesn’t give advice all the time or try to fix things. God listens and gives us the power to work things through for ourselves, but I need you to be with me too. Please, just listen. If you want to talk, wait a few minutes for your turn, and I’ll listen to you.”
The person expressing themselves here is doing so through their own model of the world. It is clear what they are wanting.
Silence the chatterbox
Have you ever been in a meeting when you put forward an idea and someone else either interrupts or overrides what you have to say? It’s as if there is a competition of ideas. Instead of building on the initial idea, each one is shot down and destroyed. How does that make you feel?
For many years, I ran team-working workshops where the team learned to respect each other and their ideas. Charting people’s thoughts made them consider what they were saying. We displayed them around the room. This technique avoided repetition. We would achieve resolution more quickly.
The benefits of charting are:
Each person was listened to.
When meetings became too rowdy we introduced a speaking stick.
Someone could only speak when holding the ‘speaking stick.’
It can also be a great way to facilitate heated family arguments!
Mark’s story
When Mark arrived for a 1:1 two-day breakthrough retreat, the first thing he said to me was, words to the effect, “I want you to help me get out of my marriage.”
I was somewhat taken aback. I had never had anyone be quite so explicit in what they would like to work on. I chose to stick to my usual program to find out if this was still the case at the end of our two days, I explained the NLP communication model and we worked through the process I always used with clients.
The outcome was interesting:
We used clean language
We explored memories
Discovered Mark’s values
Rid him of his negative emotions and limiting beliefs
At the end of two days, his mindset had changed and he set far-reaching goals. There was no mention of dissolving his marriage. When Mark was about to leave, he was excited about his future. Then he asked if he could take his charts home with him. I was delighted. No one had ever made that request before. A few weeks later, Mark contacted me to tell me what had happened when he arrived home.
His wife told him their son was in trouble and they had to go and see the headmaster. When they returned home, his wife looked at Mark incredulously, asking how he had resolved the school problems so easily and effortlessly. Mark had not behaved as the angry ‘old Mark’ they knew so well. That part of him had disappeared. She hardly recognized the man he had become and asked what had happened. Mark proceeded to take out all his charts and shared his experience with his family.
Consider these takeaways
Use positive language when talking to yourself or others, clean language.
Listen and be present.
Build on ideas.
Agree a way forward that benefits everyone.
Keep on talking. It's what makes a community special.
Respect everyone else has their own unique model of the world.
Believe you can add value by speaking your truth.
Read more from Carol Passemard
Carol Passemard, Executive Coach & Mentor
Carol Passemard has gained many skills through her own life’s experiences. She is a trainer in Neurolinguistic Programming, Timeline Therapy® , and Hypnosis. Her unique style of a 2-day intensive workshop helps people who are feeling stuck and unable to see the wood for the trees. They are often at a crossroads in their life. Carol provides them with an opportunity to get to know and understand themselves, whilst working in a safe environment. Often, clients say this workshop is an experience. It’s a place to get rid of negative baggage and learn new tools and techniques in order to make a difference in their personal and business life. “Seeing things from another perspective has helped me massively.”
