Benefits of New Self-Talk Style

The researchers and independent evaluators found that the participants who used their ‘first name’ and ‘you’ had less anxiety, were more confident (_____, you can do this), performed better, perceived less shame for making mistakes, and experienced less social anxiety not only before the event but also afterward in post-event processing, when people tend to chew over their performance and find themselves lacking. This self-talk style depersonalizes things slightly, more objectively directs your brain to accomplish what you want to do, and empowers you to view as a challenge what others see as a threat. According to Dr. Kross, the distance gained by using your ‘given name’ and the pronoun ‘you’ confers a type of wisdom and resolves what he dubs King Solomon’s paradox: people often reason more wisely about the social problems of others than they do about their own. First-name self-talk shifts the focus away from the self; it allows people to transcend their inherent egocentrism and fear—and that helps to make them as smart in thinking about themselves as they typically are about others.