The Voice in Your Head Shapes Your Life

The conversation

You're having a conversation with yourself all day long, and you probably don't notice how much of your life it decides. According to Gili, the way you speak to yourself doesn't stay at the level of thought. It physically changes your brain, and through that, everything that happens in your life. You have no control over what happens outside you, only over your own response, and that's where all your energy should go. The insecurity you feel doesn't come from what other people really think of you either. It comes from your own fear of what you think about yourself.

The truth

The way you talk to yourself physically changes your brain, and through that your energy and your life. This isn't a slogan, it's a neurological claim.

Gili argues that we have no control over the world outside us, only over our own response, so that's where it's worth putting our energy.

Insecurity doesn't come from what other people actually think about us. It comes from our fear of what we think about ourselves, and that's what we project outward.

The brain translates everything we experience into electrical signals and nothing else, so in a certain sense our words and our thoughts build our reality.

One striking example: children in the West grow up with the word "guilt" and learn to tie a mistake to their identity ("I'm not good enough"), while in cultures that have no such word, a child learns only to repair what happened.

The concepts and the language we live inside determine which emotions we're able to feel, which is why changing your inner language is the real path to healing.

Questions and answers

Why do I constantly need other people's approval to feel okay about myself, and why is it never enough?

Insecurity doesn't come from what other people really think about us, because there's no way to know that. It comes from our own fear of what we think about ourselves, and that fear is what we project outward. Since the source of it is inside, trying to fill it from an outside source can't work.

How do you build real self-confidence?

Self-confidence isn't built out of courses, mantras or podcasts. It comes from actions and real results. When you do what you told yourself you would do, you teach your brain that you can be trusted.

Gili's original episode description

The most meaningful conversation you will ever have, and also the most dangerous one, isn't with God, and it isn't with your boss, and it isn't with your partner either. It's the conversation you're having with yourself, and you're having it right now too.

That voice in your head has already decided whether you're moving forward or staying stuck in the same loop. And the truth is that if you go on talking to yourself this way, your life will go on looking exactly the same.

It's the words, and it's the tone too. There's a difference between speaking to yourself in a weak, small, powerless voice and speaking to yourself with determination, with conviction, with certainty! When you change the way you speak to yourself, you change your brain, and when you change your brain, you change your energy, and changing your energy changes your whole life. This has nothing to do with motivation. I'm not here to pump you up. This is science! That is how you reprogram the subconscious.

You can't truly believe in yourself as long as you speak to yourself unkindly. You can't be a success and say the opposite things to yourself. Belief grows out of repetition, out of daily inner talk that tells your subconscious: this is me, this is who I'm becoming, this is my future. Give it instructions! Stop going along with every foolish thought that comes into your head. Knock it off. You're not going with the flow, you're not a sewer. You're steering! You decide what happens. Why? Because that's why!

Think of your mind as a garden. If you plant seeds of doubt and fear, success won't grow there. Pay attention to what you say to yourself, and change the conversation.