The Science of Self Talk by Ian Tuhovsky

We all speak to ourselves on a daily basis. Whether it is out loud or an inner voice, how we speak to ourselves impacts our daily lives.

If you fail in something, does your inner voice belittle you? Does it call you a failure/loser? Or, does your inner voice console you and give you positive feedback and help you get back on track?

The Science of Self Talk is about identifying our ‘critical inner voice’ and making certain necessary changes so that it doesn’t bring us down. Negative self-talk is harmful and leads to stress, depression, anxiety and helplessness. The topics covered in this book include:

• Constructive self-talk and dysfunctional self-talk – and knowing the difference.
• The impact of negative self-talk
• Learned helplessness
• Positive self-talk – challenge or threat
• The Pareto principle
• Creating the right circumstances for motivation
• Getting to know yourself
• Loving yourself – emotional intelligence
• Turning down the volume on your self-talk

Topics such as cognitive distortions are explained in detail. The first few chapters end with an exercise – the reader is asked to write down the thoughts (positive and negative). The next few chapters deal with analysing these negative thought patterns.

The Pareto principle was something I did not like – I didn’t find it useful. The book gets descriptive at times and it could do well without some unnecessary details. If I have to summarize this book in a sentence, I would say – Tips on how to identify your inner critic and tame it (if negative). A couple of behavioural changes mentioned here are similar to those followed in CBT.

As someone who’s read a lot of self-help and mind, body and soul books, I found the content to be trivial. Not very informative and gets boring and descriptive at times. The annoying thing about this book is the links to the author’s other books. I understand this is a marketing strategy and I wouldn’t have minded the links if the content was good enough. Also, in one of the chapters, the author says ‘you can find more details about this topic on Wikipedia’. :O

The only reason I chose this book was it had a lot of four and five-starred ratings on Amazon. Hmm, turned out to be a disappointing read! If you are new to the topic of self-talk, this book might give you a brief idea about it but keep your expectations low on the quality of content.

I have given this book a 2-star rating on Goodreads.