100 Ways To Motivate Yourself, Third Edition

64. Get your soul to talk

We’ve always been a little nervous, culturally, about talking to ourselves. We usually associate it with insanity. But it was Plato who said that his definition of thinking was “the soul talking to itself.” If you really want to get your life worked out, there is no one better to talk to than yourself. No other person has as much information about your problems and no other person knows your skills and capabilities better. And there’s no one else who can do more for you than yourself.

A lot of people in the motivational and psychological professions recommend affirmations. You choose a sentence to say, such as, “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better,” and repeat it whether or not you think it’s true. While ...