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Shad Helmstetter, Ph.D., is the author of 17 books in the field of selftalk and personal growth, including What to Say When You Talk to Your Self, and The Power of Neuroplasticity. His books are published in more than 70 countries worldwide. Shad has appeared on over 1200 radio and television programs, including repeat appearances on Oprah Winfrey, ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN News.

If you would like to join an online community of positive selftalkers—people like you who are working to make their lives better—you are invited to join Self-Talk+Plus™. This is the inspiring online community where members stream self-talk to their smartphones, get to know each other, join in online activities, receive help from experienced life coaches, and share ideas that help them reach their goals. To visit this amazing online community go to selftalkplus.com.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form, printed, digital, or otherwise, except for brief quotations in reviews, without written permission from the author.

This book is based on the amazing scientific discovery that no matter what age you are, your brain continues to change, and that it is always changing. Because of your brain’s neuroplasticity, your brain is designed to continually rewire itself. And it rewires itself based on the input it gets. That’s why your self-talk is incredibly important.

Secret #1: The thoughts you think and the words you say physically and chemically change your brain. Your self-talk literally wires your brain to succeed or fail.

Day after day, word by word, your self-talk is wiring programs into your brain. And the picture of you that you wire in most is what you get back out most. It is your self-talk that creates the foundation for your success or failure in life.

Your self-talk is the commander of your ship, the director of your life. It is the brain’s guiding hand that leads you in the right direction—or in the wrong direction. Your self-talk is the messenger that tells you which path you should follow, what to think and what to do next.

Every thought you think wires your brain to be happy or sad, positive or negative, in a good mood or a bad mood, open to new ideas or closed to them, believing in yourself or not believing in yourself, looking for alternatives or accepting defeat. In fact, everything about you is, at this moment, being influenced or controlled by your self-talk.

Self-talk is the direction you give to your brain that tells it how to run your life. Self-talk is everything you say when you talk to yourself. It is your conscious thoughts, and your unconscious thoughts, the thoughts you don’t even know you’re thinking. It is what you say out loud or what you say silently to yourself. And in its most important form, your self-talk is everything you say or think about you—how you feel about yourself—and what you think and what you believe about anything and everything.

Most of us recognize that when we were growing up, we got programmed—and we end up becoming those programs and living them out. The remarkable thing, and a great blessing about selftalk, is that you can change that programming. And when you change your programs, you change your life. That’s what the right self-talk will do for you.

Secret #2: It’s been estimated that as much as 77% or more of all of the programs each of us has right now are negative, false, counter-productive, or working against us.

Since it will always be up to each of us to get rid of the negative programs we have, and replace them with the positive kind, any tool that will help us change them can be a blessing. And self-talk is the best tool for changing our programs we have ever found.

In this book you’ll find 365 daily self-talk scripts of the right kind of self-talk—the kind of self-talk we should have been getting in the first place. These self-talk scripts are the result of more than 35 years of studying self-talk and how it works, and writing and recording self-talk scripts in dozens of subject areas.

I first began writing self-talk scripts in the late 1970s. At that time, I was studying self-talk and its effects on personal success, and I was writing the first scripts for recording self-talk audio programs for people to listen to. We had learned that with repeated listening, people could permanently wire positive new messages into their brains, just by playing the recorded self-talk in the background.

At the time, the role that self-talk played in people’s lives wasn’t yet generally understood. Few people realized that their own selftalk, unconsciously repeated throughout each day, was actually programming their brain, and often in the wrong way.

My studies in this field led to the writing of 17 books on the subject of self-talk and personal growth. My first book, What to Say When You Talk to Your Self, introduced the subject of self-talk as we know it today. That book is now published in more than 70 countries, and its popularity shows how mainstream the concept of positive self-talk has become.

My recent book, The Power of Neuroplasticity, gives the latest updates on this amazing subject, and presents the science behind positive self-talk. It shows clearly that when it comes to its ability to change our lives, self-talk is based on solid science.

The self-talk messages have the power to become much more than a few words you read each day. Reading them, rereading them, and wiring them into your brain could do more than just uplift your year—it could uplift your life.

Reading the self-talk messages one day at a time will give you not only daily inspiration, but also a chance to make each day a better day. However, if you’re looking for extra guidance or inspiration at any time, turn to any page to see what you find. If you’re looking for an uplift, or need to get back on track, you’re sure to find the self-talk you need is just a few pages away.

If you want to get the greatest benefit from this book, read each day’s self-talk message as you start your day, and read that same message again just before you go to sleep that night.

There’s a reason for doing this that has to do with the way the brain gets programmed. Every time you send a message to your brain, your brain physically, chemically, records it temporarily. The more positive messages your brain gets, the more positive directions it will record—and in time, with enough repetition, your brain will go beyond recording them temporarily; it will “wire them in,” by creating new neural pathways, and act on them.

Each time you read the positive self-talk phrases in this book, you’re sending more healthy messages to your brain. The more you repeat these messages, the stronger and more permanent they become. So you’re literally rewiring your own brain with healthy, positive thoughts and messages.

When you first read or listen to positive self-talk, because it’s positive and stated in the present tense, you might think, “But that’s not me,” or “That’s not true about me.” That’s because some self-talk can sound too good to be true. So is it?

The answer is that positive self-talk paints a new picture of how you’re choosing to become. It may not sound like you or your life the first time you read it, but it defines the new choices you’re making to become that way. It may not be you at the moment, but it’s a picture of you that you’re choosing to create.

The brain listens best to directions that are specific and detailed. The better your brain can see it, the better it can help you create it. That’s why self-talk is worded in the present tense; to give your brain the clearest, completed picture possible of what you want to accomplish. The clearer the picture you give to your brain of who you want to become, and how you want your life to be, the better your brain will physically ‘wire it in’ and help you get it.

When you see an artist’s illustration of the fabulous new home you’re going to build, you don’t look at the picture of your home and say, “This isn’t true,” or “This isn’t real,” just because your dream home isn’t built yet. You look at the illustration of that beautiful new home and see yourself living in it! It may not be a touchable reality when you first imagine it, but it is a future reality in the process of becoming real.

That’s what positive self-talk is: it’s a picture of you as you choose to become— the picture of you you’re telling your brain to create. The right self-talk is telling you the truth of who you really are, and what you choose to do now to bring the real you to life.

Secret #3: What you repeat frequently, wires the brain. That’s so important, it bears repeating: Repetition wires the brain. Because what you experience most, you ‘wire in’ most, the most important key to success is repetition.

Repetition is the key to wiring or rewiring your brain in the right way because of the way neural networks are formed in the brain. Neural pathways in the brain are formed by repeatedly sending electrical and chemical messages (your thoughts) over the same route—over and over again—like building a highway with layer after layer of concrete or asphalt.

In your brain, each time you travel over the same route—each time your brain receives a repeat of the same message—the pathway becomes stronger and stronger, until, with enough repeated passes, you’ve created a new ‘highway of thought’ in your brain.

When similar highways connect, “programs” are formed. These programs—inter-connected mental super highways—become our beliefs, our attitudes, and our opinions about everything. And we create all of them through repetition. Everything we believe, about anything, actually comes to us through repetition. Everything you believe about yourself, also comes to you through repetition.

Now, when we want to rewire our brains with better programs, we use the same process. But this time we’re repeating better messages—positive self-talk—and building new, more positive, neural networks in the brain.

A message that isn’t repeated, only gives your brain a passing thought; it doesn’t get wired in permanently. But the exact same message repeated often enough, creates a new neural pathway, and it becomes a ‘permanent’ part of who you are.

When you find a daily self-talk message that you especially like, or one that speaks to you with special meaning, be sure to mark it so you can easily find it and come back to it.

Since the more often you repeat any self-talk message, the more you’ll begin to wire it into your brain, it’s a good idea to go back to those messages you’d like to make a permanent part of your positive programs, and read and reread them again.

People often learn to recite lines of their favorite poetry by reading them often. Some of the self-talk you’ll find here is poetry for a positive mind, and you can learn and remember it by rereading it frequently.

Also, mark any messages you feel could help you at a later time, should you ever need them. Self-talk messages can offer encouragement, a helping hand, and can uplift your spirit when you need it most.

You’ll also benefit from reading the self-talk scripts out loud. When you read aloud you’re engaging more senses and increasing your brain activity. When you’re reading self-talk out loud and focusing on the message you’re reading, you’ll increase retention. Reading self-talk in this way isn’t required to get the benefit of practicing self-talk, but it will help.

If you find reading aloud is not convenient—you may want privacy when you’re reading out loud—or if you find it difficult to add to your schedule each day, just read the self-talk in a normal way, silently, to yourself. The most important thing is to read it, and make it as convenient as possible, so you’ll have no reason not to stay with it.

By itself, reading self-talk helps you see each day in a healthy way, and reading even one passage each morning and at night is a habit you should create. When you also listen to self-talk each day, it will help you rewire your brain in a stronger way, and it will do it faster.

Positive self-talk was first written and recorded to be listened to. (The first professionally recorded self-talk programs were introduced in 1981.) The idea proved to be so helpful that many thousands of people now listen to 10- to 20-minute self-talk sessions every day on their smartphones or other listening devices.

Recorded self-talk is different from the self-talk you find in this book. The recorded form of self-talk goes into greater detail; it is more in-depth in specific subject areas that are important to you personally, that you want to work on. In recorded self-talk, each self-talk phrase is also repeated three times, each time with different word emphasis and intonations that increase the strength of the message, and help the brain wire it in faster and stronger.

Recordings of subjects like self-talk for weight-loss, personal relationships, health and fitness, job and career, finances, selfesteem, etc., and even special self-talk for kids and young people, give the listener in-depth self-talk programs that are designed to be listened to each day.

When self-talk is listened to frequently—usually each day for two or three weeks on each subject area you want to work on—the daily repetition of the self-talk causes the brain to rewire itself naturally, and with the right programs. The more often your brain hears those same messages repeated, the stronger and faster they are wired in.

While you’re practicing self-talk each day, and you find that the idea of positive self-talk makes sense to you, if you’d like to have more help and support making self-talk a part of your life, and if you’d like to get to know other people who feel the same way, you are invited to join a wonderful community of positive self-talkers at Self-Talk+Plus.

Self-Talk+Plus is an online membership community that was created to bring self-talkers together, give people additional motivation and help, update my readers on the latest news and developments, and stream recorded self-talk audio programs so you can listen to any self-talk you choose at any time, like listening to your favorite online music. You’re invited to join us at selftalkplus.com.

Throughout this book you’ll also find useful “Self-Talk Tips”—helpful ideas and discoveries that will show you how positive selftalk works, where it comes from and what it can do for you.

Instead of waiting to read each Self-Talk Tip until you arrive at its place in the book, you may want to skip ahead and read through more of the tips, just as though you’re reading a separate “how to” companion book of tips to help you get the most from the daily self-talk messages.

The importance of repetition in creating positive neural pathways in the brain is so important, that some of the key points will be expressed, in different ways, more than once. If you find a key concept idea that is repeated, that’s not an accident. That’s how the brain gets it, holds it, and, with enough repetition, wires it in.

I hope you’ll find the self-talk both uplifting and helpful. And I hope that among the many self-talk messages in these pages, you’ll find some of the answers in your quest for the incredible person you were designed to be. To get started, all you have to do is choose a date, go to that page, and let the journey begin.

“Of all the days I have lived before, of all the days that lie ahead, now is the time to live my dreams, give life to my greatest goals, and live up to the incredible me I was born to be. And the wonderful, positive, promising, and unlimited world I have in front of me, all begins with me, today.”

“Now is a perfect time to get myself in shape. I choose to be healthy and fit, so I eat right, I get the exercise I need, and I make sure I get the right amount of rest and relaxation. And I make sure I give my mind a healthy diet of self-talk that builds my attitude, shows me at my best, and motivates me to reach my goals.”

“Right now I choose to change my life for the better. With every choice I make, I am creating the successes I’m living today, and the future I will be living tomorrow. In everything I do, I choose to find my best.”

Self-Talk Tip #1

Positive Self-Talk is More Than Positive Thinking

Positive self-talk isn’t just about positive thinking; it’s about managing all of the thoughts that are being wired into your brain.

it’s a detailed set of program instructions that will fly the plane to its objective.

Positive thinking, by itself, is a good thing, and it helps you look at the world in a bright and healthy way. But positive self-talk, like the navigator’s instructions to the computer, is more specific. The right self-talk identifies every step you need to take to get where you’re going, sets the course to get you there, keeps you uplifted and motivated on the journey, and makes sure you arrive safely, and on time.