Good Morning Reader
Back in the day, if you were up early enough, you might have seen a sweaty Black man running through the streets at 5 a.m., mumbling to himself like he’d lost the plot.
That man was me.
I wasn’t losing my mind. I was training it.
I had made a decision: no matter the weather, rain, wind, sleet or snow, I was going to run at least 6 miles every single day. Not for the physical high, but for the mental mastery. Every step, every breath, every "just stop" whisper in my head was an invitation to choose discipline over comfort.
And let’s be real. I know they say talking to yourself is the first sign of madness.
Full disclosure: I actually got pulled over once by the police.
Apparently, muttering to yourself while running in the dark looks a little... suspicious. But the truth is, if you don’t learn to talk to yourself, there’s still a conversation happening. It’s just the quiet one inside, the one you’ve left unchecked for too long, running the show.
🧠 Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO)
I first learnt the term GIGO as a teenager: Garbage In, Garbage Out.
In coding, if you feed a system bad inputs, you’ll get bad results. Every single time.
That stuck with me.
Because the same principle applies to your mind.
What you consume, what you hear, believe, and repeat becomes your internal operating system.
Feed it fear, shame, doubt... don’t be surprised when that’s what comes out when life squeezes you.
Back then, I filled my mornings with motivational voices like ET, Zig Ziglar and Les Brown. Wisdom that became a kind of mental playlist I could draw on when my own voice got shaky.
I started to realise self-talk isn’t cheesy. It’s a strategy.
The battle was never really in my legs. It was between my ears.
And the real enemy wasn’t fatigue.
It was that quiet, cunning voice whispering,
“You’ve done enough.”
“You’re not built for this.”
“No one’s watching, so why keep going?”
Here’s the twist most people miss.
That inner voice? It’s still you.
Just a version of you shaped by fear, by the past, by outdated scripts.
So let me ask you this.
Who wrote the script you’ve been living?
Was it a teacher who said you weren’t creative?
A parent who only praised perfection?
A society that told you to stay in your lane?
If you never question the voice inside, you become a passenger in your own life.
But when you flip the script, when you start writing a new internal dialogue, you reclaim authorship.
You move from survival mode to self-leadership.
From replaying pain to rehearsing power.
Try this:
- Choose one phrase this week that counters an old limiting belief.
- Write it down. Record it. Stick it on your mirror.
- Say it out loud, especially when the other voice starts whispering.
Because if you’re not talking to yourself, you’re still being spoken to.
Let me leave you with this:
The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones no one else hears.
Make sure they’re strengthening you, not shrinking you.
Because the future version of you?
They’re listening to the words you speak today.