Strategies For Your Conversations With Yourself

Understand what you are already doing well: Look at the conversations with yourself, where you scored highly and identify what makes them effective. Perhaps you give yourself time to think, listen to what you are feeling, challenge your first reaction, speak to yourself with respect or hold yourself accountable for what you decide. Knowing what you do well makes it easier to keep doing it deliberately rather than taking it for granted.

Put your strongest conversations to work: Think about where else the qualities you have identified could help you. If you talk yourself through difficult decisions effectively, could you use the same approach when planning what you want from retirement? If you are good at challenging yourself without becoming self-critical, could you bring that ability to other areas of your life? Maintaining impactful conversations with yourself means continuing to use what already works while finding more opportunities to benefit from it.

Focus on what needs improving: Use your questionnaire to identify where your conversations with yourself are working well and where they are less effective. Perhaps you give yourself enough time to think but struggle to listen to what you really need, or hold yourself accountable but speak to yourself too critically. Concentrate on improving the lower-scoring qualities while continuing to use the strengths you already have.

Turn understanding into something useful: Good conversations with yourself should help you understand what is happening and decide what, if anything, you want to do about it. After reflecting, ask yourself what you have learnt and what needs to happen next. That might mean making a decision, trying something differently, giving yourself more time, seeking support or having a conversation with someone else. The aim is to make sure your internal conversations help you move forward rather than repeatedly covering the same ground.

Recognise the conversations that are working against you: Use your questionnaire to identify what is making your conversations with yourself less effective. Perhaps you rush yourself, dismiss what you are feeling, become overly critical, repeatedly focus on what has gone wrong or avoid holding yourself accountable for what you can change. Begin by noticing these qualities as they occur. Recognising how you are talking to yourself gives you the opportunity to respond differently.

Start having a different conversation: Choose one or two of your lowest-scoring qualities and deliberately practise an alternative. If you are highly critical, try speaking to yourself with greater respect; if you rush to conclusions, give yourself more time; if you avoid difficult issues, ask yourself what needs your attention; or if your thoughts repeatedly go around in circles, identify what you actually know and what you can do next. You do not need to transform your conversations with yourself all at once. Improving one part of them gives you somewhere practical to begin.