Your Self-Talk Is Sabotaging You | Here's What to Do Now!

Have you ever wanted to try something, start something, ask something, or move forward — but something inside stopped you?

In this episode we breakdown the power of self-talk and how your inner conversation can either help you move forward or keep you stuck.

Using real-life stories, I reveal how often we talk ourselves into waiting, shrinking back, or assuming the answer is "no" before we even ask the question. 

But the real issue is not always the opportunity in front of us — it is the conversation happening inside of us.

• Your self-talk is shaped by your self-concept.
• Your self-concept shapes your capacity.
• And your capacity determines the change you can sustain.

This episode I will help you see why you may be red-lighting yourself in life, faith, business, leadership, relationships, and personal growth — and how to begin training your self-talk to give yourself permission to proceed.

This is not about becoming someone new.
This is about returning to what is true.

Transcript

Treveal C.W. Lynch (00:00)
All right, we should be live. We should be live. Today we are talking the power of self-talk, how to try more, do more, and get unstuck. Welcome to the live episode of the I Am The Possible podcast, Experience The Place, where possibilities become perspective. Guys, welcome into the space and welcome into the place.

I is your host, Travail C. W. Lynch. Mr. What What. And today we're talking about the power of our self-talk. The power of our self-talk. Have you ever wanted to do something? Wanted to try something? Wanted to just move forward in a particular area of your life? You saw the opportunity, but something held you back, right? It's like this invisible wall that keeps you from

attempting it, trying it, moving forward, seeing consistent progress. If that's you, today's episode is definitely for you. Because at the end of the day, it's about using the tools that God's already given us, the resources, the skills that God has already given us to advance our lives, to grow, to develop, to mature, to see everything that's possible, to really unlock.

the potential that God has given us. And my approach to this, I consider it more restorative, showing people, teaching people, helping people to see, to take notice of, to appreciate, to account for, to assess what they already have, what they already have. And today, this self-talk, this is something that you already have. It's something that you're already doing.

I really believe that right now where we are as a society, as a culture, as a country, as individuals, I think like never before, we need to be resourceful, but to have a mindset of resourcefulness as it concerns our faith and as it concerns our profession, our vocation, and just our overall quality of life.

And I believe that the self-talk is one of those things that can be leveraged to really help you to move forward. And today I'm going to be talking about ⁓ how that's played out in my own personal life and how you can also take advantage of it. So before we jump into my story, I want to kind of lay the foundation. I entitled this one, The Power of Self-Talk because the word power by definition.

It means the ability to move something from here to there. And in many times, we're the, what's trying to be moved from here to there. You're stuck. You feel stuck in a position in life and you haven't been seeing progress and you want to see progress. You want to go from here to there, but there's a gap. There's a bridge that hasn't been built yet. There's something that's holding you back. That invisible wall that I talked about earlier.

I believe that you can leverage the self-talk to build that bridge. Okay? So the first thing that I want you to understand is that self-talk is powerful. Powerful. It has power. The power to move you from where you are, stuck, to where you want to go. Whatever that looks like. Whether it's just personal growth, whether it's a career.

whether it's faith, whether it's relationships, physical health, any stage of development that you desire to promote and to engage in, I believe that at the center of it is going to be your self-talk, all right? Your self-talk. And so the first thing is I wanna share my story. And ⁓ I was at the gym, you guys know I'm a gym rat. And the other day I was at the gym and...

I got up super early and got there. No, I'm sorry. I got up super early this morning and I got there. This particular day, I actually didn't get there as soon as I would want to. think it was maybe like 4.30-ish, somewhere around that timeframe. And if you know anything about the swimming culture at gyms, at least the gym I go to, the swimming culture is we are early.

Birds, all right, they say the early bird gets the worm, the early bird gets the pool, okay? And so you gotta get up early, man, and you gotta get there, and you gotta be like one of the first ones in, or it feels like pretty fast. So I get there a little later than I wanted to, and there was three lanes, but obviously those three lanes are actually cut into two lanes. So basically one lane can be cut into two lanes. So it's essentially six, because if you know how to swim,

You can swim on either side of a given lane. So there's really the potential of six swimmers, but you we're, you know, know how we do. We like to have the whole lane to ourselves. Right. So most of the time when you go, there's only three people in the pool taking up the whole lane. So that's normally kind of what the culture is. Right. And so I get there and there's one lady in the far lane. She's doing her thing. She's swimming. She's doing her thing. And I'm like, all right, cool.

And as I'm walking in, these two guys, they walk down and they get into the pool. And so I'm like, oh man, all the lanes are taken up. The first thought, and this is key, leaning into this, my first thought was, all right, I'm a kill time. I'm a go sit in the sauna and I'm a wait. I'm a wait till these guys do their thing. So I actually go into the sauna and I'm watching them and the self talk is starting.

Because again, remember today's episode are for people who you see an opportunity, you see where you want to go, you see what you want to do. But the self talk hasn't been quite trained yet and developed yet and cultivated yet to be able to assist you and, and, and empower you to get to where you want to go. All right. So this is how it played out for me because I've been training this for awhile. my default mechanism, which is important to understand by default, we're going to scale back by default. We're going to shrink back.

by default, we're going to be the old self. So a part of that was at work within me, right? So I go into the sauna and I'm watching them and these guys are talking. They just sitting in the pool, man, talking. They ain't swimming. They ain't moving. They just chopping it up, man. Just two, one guy's in one lane, the other guy's in the other lane, and they just chopping it up. So I observed this for about a minute and my self talk gets to going, hey, ⁓ they're going to be a wow.

Like they're to be a minute. If I sit here and wait, I got somewhere to go. Like I got to get back to the house. I got to get, you know, my day going. All of that starts going through my head. And I say to myself, well, I always teach my kids this very valuable lesson. This, I find it valuable. Maybe you don't, but I do. But this is something that I've taught my kids all their lives from, from little till now.

I said, the only way you fail in life is if you don't ask enough questions. That's the only way you fail in life, is you just don't ask enough questions. I believe if you ask enough questions of enough people, you'll get the answer that you want in life. And so I said to myself, I'm a question away. All I gotta do is go over to here and ask these guys, listen man, can I, you know, and obviously that's being polite, right? Cause I have something else to share with you in just a moment of how this self-talk gets here.

But the first thing I said was, I'm a question away. All I gotta do is go over here and ask these guys to just, hey man, ⁓ can I go ahead and start swimming one of these lanes? Cause now I'm not saying this to them, but I'm thinking this to myself. Y'all just holding up water. Like y'all, y'all ain't really doing nothing. So I go out to Sana and I say, hey, excuse me. Can I, ⁓ and before I could even finish the sentence, they're like, sure man, absolutely. Sure man, absolutely. I get up my gear. I put my goggles on, get my stuff.

I get in the water before I could barely even get in the water. Guess what these guys do? They start getting out. They weren't in the water to swim. Maybe they had already swam and they were just getting back in it. Cause sometimes people get in and they get out, they take a shower, they go in the hot tub, they get back in. But they were just lollygagging. They were just two guys chilling. They weren't in the pool to swim. Now here's the point that I want to really make and really drive home.

I was about to sit in that sauna and wait for them to finish. Do you know how long I would have been waiting? Because they had no incentive to move. They were just hanging out. They would have sat there for an hour for all I know. And how many times is it in life that you see the opportunity, you see the thing you want to do, you see the thing

⁓ that you want to take on in life. You see the area that you want to improve in. You see the business that you want to start. You see the ministry that you want to get going. You see the thing and the area in life that you want to improve ⁓ in. And the opportunity is there, but that invisible wall, that fear, that timidity, that thing is holding you back. And what I've come to understand and what I've come to learn is that everything that's holding us back,

99 % of the things that are holding us back, unless you're in one of those rare situations, 99 % of the things that are holding us back is right here between these two ears, the self-talk. I call it the inner conversation, right? Because that goes with my framework, right? The concept, the conversation, the capacity, the change, right? And I'm gonna get to that in just a moment, because everything goes back to that framework.

But it's that inner dialogue, that inner conversation. You're either talking yourself into the possibilities that God has created for you or you're talking yourself out of them. And here's the good news, ladies and gentlemen, you can change the conversation. You are not subject to the conversation. You are not, rather you are subject to the conversation, but you are not enslaved to the conversation. In other words, the conversation doesn't have to rule you. You can rule the conversation.

The conversation doesn't have to drive you. You can drive the conversation. The conversation doesn't have to control you. You can control the conversation because at the end of the day, your conversation is either the green light or the red light or the yellow. Let's, let's just do the traffic light example. You're in a car, you're driving, you're approaching the traffic light. It's either green and it's saying, continue to proceed. It's either yellow is telling you to slow your butt down or it's red is telling you to stop.

and your self-talk, your self-dialogue, that inner conversation that you're having with yourself every day, a million times a day on so many different decisions, on so many different levels. You are either slowing down, stopping, or telling yourself that you can go. You're either red lighting it, green lighting it, or yellow lighting it on every decision. But it's the self-talk, it's the inner dialogue, it's the conversation that you are having with yourself. Now, again,

What informs this conversation? And this is the most important part. It's the self-concept. Who you believe you are. Who you believe you are. Remember, I always like to draw the analogy of the character in a movie. Our life is the movie that we're playing a role in and we have a character.

And that character is determined by the concept that we have of ourselves, determined by the environments and the experiences that we've had, most of which are in our early years of development, those formative years. They shaped us to believe that we are a certain kind of person. We like certain things, we do certain things, we don't like certain things, we don't do certain things. And that concept informs our conversation. And that conversation informs our capacity to do or not do whatever it is

in life that's before us. So that's the mystery right there. I've just laid it out for you. Step one, step two, step three, improve the concept, improve the conversation, improve the conversation, improve the capacity to create the change that you want in your life. That's the formula. Now let me share one other story, because I think this other story really drives us home, really, really drives us home. So as I get in the pool and I'm doing my laps, right, I'm swimming, there's another gentleman that walks in.

And he walks in and I see him come in and he goes to the other side of the pool and he sits down. And like I told you, there was a lady in the far lane. She was already swimming. And then there was another lady that joined us and she started swimming as well. So now it's two ladies swimming and it's me on the far lane. And the gentleman sits down and he's watching us swim. And I did about two or three laps. I, I kind of said to myself, self-talk.

This pool is built for six people. Unless he just has a thing about not getting in the pool with other people, which is probably not the case, more than likely the case is he's having a self conversation, right? He's doing some self talk that's telling him, I'll wait, like I was about to do. He's probably saying to himself, I'll wait. I'll wait until they get out, right? By default, he's doing the same thing.

Well, this lady in the far lane, I saw her say something to him. I didn't know what she said until a little later, but I saw her say something to him. And then he stood up, walked to the front of the pool and he started to get in. It wasn't until later on when I was getting out that she actually said, and this is what I heard. She said, hey man, if I wouldn't have said anything, you would still be waiting.

That's literally what she said. It was a perfect scenario for this video. Like it was like, God gave me this amazing moment in life to say, go record that video. Cause someone needs to hear it. Right. Go, go record that episode. Cause someone needs to hear it. It was so crazy. It was like, it played out perfectly. The difference is I gave myself permission to get in the pool, not caring or knowing what them, what them dudes were going to say or do.

That wasn't my concern. My concern was I'm getting in this pool because I got some words to go and if I sit here and wait on you, I'm gonna be all day. That guy was probably willing to wait all day. Here's what I'm saying and this is how it ties in. Some of us are waiting all day in life to move forward because our self talk hasn't been trained the way we talk to ourselves.

the things we say to ourselves. It hasn't been trained, it hasn't been developed, it hasn't been cultivated to the place where we're flowing and going in a capacity that gives us permission to proceed. We're not green lighting ourselves, we're yellow lighting and red lighting ourselves more often than we're green lighting ourselves because our self-talk is being informed by a concept of ourselves that informs the

conversation that, hey, he or she, you're not the person that moves forward. You're not the person that starts that business. You're not the person that starts that ministry. You're not the person that leads the way for others. You're not the person that helps out or that makes an impact or that makes a difference in this world. You're not that person. That concept that you have of yourself, it is literally informing your conversation. You're saying to yourself,

And this is a subconscious conversation. That's why you don't know what's going on, right? It's like when you cut the computer on right now, right? I'm recording on a computer, but there's a back end to the computer. There's a hard drive and I don't see that hard drive. It's somewhere embedded in the bottom or the basement, so to speak, of the computer. And we have a subconscious mind that's sub meaning below. That's why it's not conscious. Conscious means on the level.

Subconscious means below the level where we can take notice of it, but the mind remembers the brain remembers the trauma that you've gone through the brain remembers the the experiences that you've had the brain remembers how you've done it in the past and Whatever you have continued to train you will continue to maintain And I know it rhymes but it's real talk

What you train, you maintain. So if you've been training shrinking back, if you've been training getting right up to the line, but freezing and going back, if you've been training that allowing that to be your cycle of life, your repetition, right? Whatever we repeat, we reinforce. Whatever we reinforce, we repeat. So goes the cycle of life. And this works on the positive and it works on the negative. Whatever you repeat, you reinforce. gets stronger. It gets more locked in.

You get into a zone, a positive zone, a negative zone. Doesn't matter. The brain doesn't care. The brain is set up to support you and to bring evidence to support you in whatever you believe. So if you believe you're a loser, your brain is gonna find evidence throughout your day to prove to you that you are a loser. It just wants to support you. The brain is, doesn't care.

If you're giving it negative information, positive information, it just wants to support you. The brain wakes up every morning and says, who do you believe you are? That's who you believe you are? Bet, let's get it. We're going to make sure you fail today because you believe that you're a failure. Oh, you're a winner? Okay, we're going to make sure you win today because you believe that you're a winner. Whatever it is, whatever label you can put on yourself, right? That's why in here, the I Am The Possible universe, up in here on this platform,

We use the word possible because we're whatever God has made possible for every given moment in time. We are not bound by a moment. We're not bound by labels. We're not bound by human limitations. We're not bound by the past. We're not bound by the trauma that we've experienced. We are only bound by that which God has said is possible for us. That's what we're building in this universe. That's what we're building on this platform. I am the

Possible I am whatever God has made possible for me to be with that mindset with that mindset We go into anything with confidence. We show up on our job with confidence. We show up in the world with confidence We show up at the pool at the gym with confidence. We show up in our families with confidence We show up at church with confidence. We show up wherever we are with confidence Why because it ain't depending on us is be is depending on God our Creator

who provides us with everything that we need in whatever moment that we find ourselves in. So somebody needed to hear that, because you know how we say us preachers, that wasn't in my notes, that wasn't in my notes. But guys, the self-talk is determined by the self-concept. And again, here's the good news, the self-concept can be trained. I didn't mention it earlier, but the self-concept that I have, a part of my concept that I've been training,

right, for 20 something years, right? It takes time, like this has been some years, but what I've been training is that I'm worthy of a good life. I'm worthy of whatever God says is possible of life, whether I'm a Christian or not, whether I fail on something or not, whether I've messed up or missed a mark or whatever it is, I'm not tied to those things.

I've been reading and studying and researching and learning so much over the last 26, 27 years about who I am. And I'm not perfect, but I'm much better than I was. And it all began with the concept, a better idea, a better image of who I am. And I began to build upon that over these last 20 plus years. I've been just building on it. And the more I read, the more I studied, the more I developed, the more I understand, the more I put this stuff to action, to work in my life, training it.

maintaining it, the more I'm convinced that I don't have to live according to a label, that I don't have to shrink back off of anything. Because those are limitations that I make up in my own mind, and I'm the only one that has to be subject to those limitations. So when that light bulb went off, I said, my God, if I'm the only one that has to live the limitations that I make up, I'm stop making them up. I'm gonna make up why I can.

I'ma make up why I will. I'ma make up why I am. You can too. You can do the same thing. You can do the same thing. If you're live here on the chat, ⁓ YouTube, LinkedIn, just put an amen. Agree with me. Just put an amen in the chat. Put an amen on the comments. Just, I agree. Just agree. Let it be. So it is with me, right? Just drop an amen to that.

Because whatever you see in me can be seen in you. All right. So here's my CTA, my call to action. It's the same T it's the same. It's the same CTA that I've been, I've been, you know, talking about and going off on for the last whatever months that we've been at this. I'm, and I'm gonna just keep on, I'm gonna keep on pushing it. I'm gonna keep on pushing it. The link is in the description. It's about the self concept, man. It's about analyzing. It's about.

researching, it's about discovering, it's about unpacking what's already there. This is about trueness, not newness. I'm gonna say that again for the people in the back. This is about trueness, not newness. The world preaches you gotta do something new, you gotta find something new, you gotta develop something new, you gotta take on something new. Okay, fine, I'm not the world. In this universe, this platform,

We're talking about the trueness. This is about restorative work. This is about going back to what already is, what you already have, what you already are, and working from that worth, not for that worth. Working from, working from, working from, not working for. If you're working for, you're always chasing the carrot, always chasing the carrot and not quite getting it. And you can have those conversations as well.

Man, I'm always coming up short. Man, I'm always failing. Man, it's never enough. I'm never enough. It's never enough. Yeah, well flip it. Work from. I'm already enough. It's already enough. We are already enough. I already have enough. God has already provided enough. It's so simple that is mind blowing. It's so transformative that is mind blowing, but at the same time,

It's so difficult because we've trained the opposite for so long. But again, the good news is we don't have to stay there. We don't have to stay there. can train something new. We can train something new. let's train something new. Hey, let me check out the chat. I see somebody in the chat. Something's in the chat. There it is. He said, that's not it. It's so subtle. You don't realize it. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes, yes, yes.

My man, I am the possible John is in the building. Yeah, man. It's so simple. Say amen. Thank you. Hallelujah. Amen. Yeah, man. Amen. Agree with that. So please you, my brother, take that assessment, download it. The link is there. If you can't just click on the link, then highlight it, put it into your browser. Take that. Take that assessment. Anybody else that's joining anyone else that's going to get on here later on, please, please, please take.

that assessment because that's where it begins. Train the concept, train the conversation, train the conversation, train the capacity, train the capacity, train the change. So many ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch's, but train the change that you're experiencing in your life. All right. That's it, man. This is it. I want to go ahead and wrap it up. Love you guys, praying for you guys, believing in you guys. This is another episode here in the I Am The Possible Podcast Universe.

on the I Am The Possible podcast. Experience the place where possibilities become perspective as we are shutting it down. Guys, remember, if you build a better relationship with yourself, right? If you create a better relationship with yourself, that's the key. If you do that, the relationship that you have with yourself, everything else opens up. Everything else opens up. Remember the garden. Remember the garden. I released a video earlier this morning.

Remember the garden, it was always about distracting us from what we already were and what we already had. We were already good, already enough, already had enough, and what we already had was good enough. So it's what you are and what you have, it was already good. So let's rebuild the relationship that we have with ourselves.

because that's what we lost. In the garden, reread Genesis 3, what we lost was a relationship with ourselves. The very first thing was we saw something different about ourselves and we experienced shame and we hid and we disconnected from our creator because he had to come looking for us and we disconnected from the woman or the other, right, which represents society. We disconnected because we said,

Back to God, it was the woman that you gave me. If you just read that story with eyes of understanding, what actually took place? You separated from yourself, you separated from your creator, and you separated from those within our society. It was a three-part separation, but it began every, the first domino that fell was the relationship that you had with yourself. And that's what we're doing today. We're rebuilding the relationship.

that we have with ourselves. That's the work guys. That's the work. You do that and the dominoes will begin to fall in your favor. All right. Love you guys. Praying for you guys. Believing in you guys. Until next time, continue to be your possible. I'm out.