Notice what happens the next time you get something wrong.
Is there a voice that helps you stay open and keep trying? Or one that makes you want to shut down... or give up?
Developmental neuroscience (one of my 'favorite' domains of neuroscience 🙂 suggests something important:
You didn't completely invent that voice.
When you see a young child trying something difficult, you might them talking out loud to themselves
(not always, and the lack of this can be an issue later - I'll explore that in a future article).
"No... not that one. Try the blue one. There we go."
Developmental research shows that this self-talk doesn't disappear as we grow older. It simply becomes quieter. Over time, it moves inward and becomes the inner dialogue many of us carry all day without even realizing it.
Where did those words come from?
Many of them were absorbed from the people around us as we were growing up.
How the adults in our lives responded when something went wrong. How they talked about mistakes. The tone and words they used when something went wrong.Â
Our brains were paying attention.
Those words became data.
They helped the brain build predictions about how the world works... and about what a mistake means.
In neuroscience, a mindset is in many ways a collection of predictions built from patterns of activity in the brain.
And when it comes to building those patterns, it's 'survival of the busiest'. The networks we use most become the ones our brains rely on most.
So if you make a mistake today and hear a voice saying,
"You're just not good at this."
that voice may be echoing predictions your brain learned inside an entire environment of voices.
This is one way patterns move from one nervous system to the next. (No blame here. The people who shaped your inner voice were shaped by the voices around them.)
But something has a chance to change when you open to the idea that your inner voice has a history,Â
and that you can introduce new words to update that history into something that serves you.... new examples, role models, voices, interpretations, instructions.
Because that's how neuroplasticity works.
The circuits you repeatedly use are the circuits that grow stronger.
Reflection:
Whose words do you hear when you make a mistake... and whose words do you want to hear instead?
Wishing you an inner voice that treats mistakes as biological beginnings,
StefanieÂ
P.S. Inside The Neuroscience of Mindset, there's an entire module devoted to this question: how your inner voice became your inner voice... and how to help the people you serve reshape theirs.
The voice you inherited doesn't have to be the voice you pass on.
Inside the course you'll learn:
- How early experiences become the brain's predictions about mistakes, effort, and possibility.
- What to listen for when someone says, "I always mess this up," and how to explore the prediction underneath those words together.
- Practical ways to help people build a new inner dialogue using the brain's natural capacity for neuroplasticity.
The more of us who understand where that voice comes from, the more people have the chance to change the one they'll carry into the future.
→ Join The Neuroscience of Mindset here
References and further reading
Alderson-Day, B., & Fernyhough, C. (2015). Inner speech: Development, cognitive functions, phenomenology, and neurobiology. Psychological Bulletin, 141(5), 931–965. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000021
Vygotsky, L. S. (2012). Thought and language (E. Hanfmann, G. Vakar, & A. Kozulin, Eds. & Trans.; Rev. ed.). MIT Press. (Original work published 1934)
Whitehouse, A. J. O., Maybery, M. T., & Durkin, K. (2006). Inner speech impairments in autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47(8), 857–865. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2006.01624.x
Winsler, A., Fernyhough, C., & Montero, I. (Eds.). (2009). Private speech, executive functioning, and the development of verbal self-regulation. Cambridge University Press.
