Dr. Aziz explains why forcing positive self-talk backfires. Like holding a heavy object, it exhausts you fast. Instead, he suggests staying present and treating your inner voice as background noise you can observe without believing, the way you'd ignore someone talking during a movie.
Think about this. You're watching a movie and the person behind you in the theater is talking nonstop and they're commenting on the movie. This story sucks. Why? Why did that guy do that? That's so fake, right? You're totally distracted. You're totally not in the moment. And they think, oh, being on my own side means that narrator is either gone or he's only positive. Like, you're doing great. Oh, looking sharp today. Right? And maybe You know, you could do conscious correction and try to have more positive self-talk. And, but for most of us, like, that's a very, that's like holding a heavy object. You can do it for a few minutes and then your arms are like, whoa, Jesus, right? And that's kind of what it's like to try to get the narrator to be, to be positive. What I found is much more powerful is building our capacity to be where we are in the river, steering, realizing that that commentary, that narration is just that. It's not real.
