612: Talking to Yourself Isn't Crazy (It's How You Master Your Mind) - Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod

Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod

Episode 612: “Talking to Yourself Isn't Crazy (It's How You Master Your Mind)”
Date: November 19, 2025
Host: Hal Elrod

Episode Overview

In this energizing solo episode, Hal Elrod challenges the stigma around self-talk, arguing that talking to yourself isn’t a sign of madness—it’s one of the most powerful tools for mastering your mind, boosting productivity, and transforming your emotional state. Drawing on personal stories, science-backed insights, and practical exercises, Hal offers listeners a new perspective on out-loud self-talk, culminating in a 14-day challenge for listeners to experiment with spoken affirmations and silent reflection.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Redefining Talking to Yourself

Hal opens by acknowledging the stereotype of self-talk being “crazy,” flipping it to say that not talking to yourself means missing out on a potent form of mental training.
- “If you don’t talk to yourself, you’re missing the single most powerful form of mental training that there is.” (02:00)

2. Backstory – Lessons from Matt Recore

Hal recalls living with accomplished real estate investor Matt Recore, who regularly shouted self-affirmations—especially Tony Robbins declarations.
- “He was yelling things like, I am the voice. I will lead, not follow...” (06:30)
Initially, Hal found it odd, but he soon recognized Matt was intentionally programming his mindset, which contributed to his success and generosity (e.g., Thanksgiving “Basket Brigade”).

3. The Science of Out-Loud Self-Talk

Verbalizing thoughts impacts your emotional and physiological state differently from silent thinking:
- When others speak to us, their words, tone, and energy can deeply affect our mindset; the same is true when we speak to ourselves.
Hal introduces “distanced self-talk,” citing psychological studies—the practice of using your own name for self-guidance (“Hal, you’ve got this”) instead of “I’ve got this.”
- “Psychologists call it distanced self-talk... Instead of ‘I am worthy,’ use your first name: ‘Hal, you are worthy.’” (25:00)

4. Divine Downloads – The Conscience as Guide

Hal describes receiving “Divine Downloads,” or wisdom coming to him as if spoken by another voice—the voice of his higher self or conscience.
- Example: “Hal, you need to be willing to sacrifice your preference of going to bed early to spend quality time with your children, for the limited amount of time they still live at home.” (36:10)
He frames this voice as variously conscience, highest consciousness, or “line to the Divine,” and urges listeners to act on its guidance.

5. Combatting Ego and Reconnecting with the True Self

The ego (our conditioned identity) often drowns out the guiding voice of conscience. Listening and responding to this inner voice is key to personal growth and fulfillment.
- “That voice—that’s not motivational fluff. That’s your highest self, your conscience, always pointing to your greatest good.” (34:45)

6. The 14-Day Self-Talk Challenge

Hal prescribes a simple but powerful 2-week experiment:
- Day 1: Speak your affirmations, prayers, and positive self-talk out loud. (Whispering is fine if privacy is needed.)
- Day 2: Practice these things silently.
- Alternate each day for 14 days.
- After each session, rate your mood, mental, and emotional state before and after, journaling the effect.
- “By the end of two weeks you’ll have your own data set. You’ll know whether talking to yourself improves your state or not.” (48:55)
Hal encourages sharing results and tagging him on social media.

7. Final Insights – The Power of Voice

Speaking out loud can guide and lead your mind, while internal silence helps you observe it.
- “Silence helps you observe your mind, quiet your mind. But your voice can lead it. Your voice can lead your mind. That’s the miracle of mindful self-talk.” (52:30)
Hal ends with a reminder to live fully and embrace the power of self-talk as a daily practice.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the stigma of self-talk:
- “If you don’t talk to yourself, you’re missing the single most powerful form of mental training that there is.” (02:00)
On Matt Recore’s practice:
- “He was yelling to himself. He was yelling things like, ‘I am the voice. I will lead, not follow. I will create, not destroy.’” (06:30)
On the psychology of name-usage:
- “Think about how powerful you can talk to yourself when you’re using your own name.” (25:30)
Real-life “Divine Download”:
- “Hal, you need to be willing to sacrifice your preference of going to bed early to spend quality time with your children for the limited amount of time that they still live at home.” (36:10)
On the effect of the voice:
- “When I say my affirmations or I say my prayers out loud, I feel differently, my emotions shift faster.” (19:45)
The challenge in summary:
- “Talk to yourself out loud. Be, you know, be a crazy person if that’s what you think it is. It’s not a crazy person... Don’t just think positive, speak positively and record a note... I want to hear your results.” (54:05)

Timestamps for Key Segments

00:02 – Introduction to the podcast & episode theme
06:30 – Story of Matt Recore’s self-talk practices
18:40 – Science and psychology of spoken self-talk
25:00 – The power of “distanced self-talk” using your own name
34:45 – Divine Downloads and listening to conscience
36:10 – Example of a “Divine Download” about family time
48:55 – The 14-day out-loud & silent self-talk experiment
52:30 – Summing up: Silence observes, voice leads
54:05 – Call to action: Practice and share results

Tone & Style

Hal’s style is conversational, energetic, and inspiring—he mixes personal anecdotes with actionable advice, maintains a casual yet motivational tone, and frequently addresses the listener directly.

Summary Wrap-Up

Hal Elrod’s exploration of the power of talking to yourself will challenge how you see inner dialogue. Through evidence, personal story, and direct challenge, he demonstrates that positive verbal self-talk—especially when done using your own name—can be a transformative practice for mastering your emotions, focus, and mindset. The episode culminates with a practical two-week experiment to help you discover the impact for yourself, leaving listeners with a sense of empowerment and a clear first step toward deeper self-mastery.

For more resources, show notes, and to share your experiment results, visit hallrod.com/podcast.

Transcript

A (0:02)

Hello, and welcome to the achieve your goals podcast, the show that empowers you to wake up to your full potential and achieve your biggest goals and dreams. I am your host, Hal Elrod, and I invite you to join us each week as we share actionable strategies to take your life to the next level, as well as interview world class experts and entrepreneurs who have achieved extraordinary goals themselves. And we ask them to give you a peek behind the curtain and teach you exactly what you need to do to do the same. Ready? Here we go. Hello, friends. Welcome to the achieve your goals podcast. This is Hal Elrod, and we have all heard the joke or the stipulation that people who talk to themselves are crazy, right? Conjures up the image of the person on the corner street corner, you know, jibbering and jabbering and talking erratically to themselves. But I've come to realize that if you don't talk to yourself, you're missing the single most powerful form of mental training that there is. One of the most effective ways to, to impact your mental and emotional state is to talk to yourself. And I'm not talking about just the thoughts that you think, yes, that's crucial, but I'm talking about out loud, actually verbally speaking, the words out loud that impact your consciousness. And you think about when you speak something out loud, when you say something verbally, you're literally creating sound waves that, you know, reverberate out of your mouth and then into your eardrums and they have an impact on you. Think about if someone else is talking to you. The words, the tone, the intensity, the energy, all of verbal communication impacts us significantly now when we think thoughts, and you've probably experienced this where, if you meditate before, have you ever had that happen where you're meditating and while you're meditating, you can't help. The thoughts in your head are, am I doing this right? Is this working? Am I wasting my time? Most of us can relate to that. So today I'm going to show you how to use your voice literally to transform your inner state, to strengthen your focus, to improve your productivity and lead yourself through any situation. And I will walk you through a 14 day experiment that will prove it to you. All right, first, quick backstory. I'll take you back to my 20s. I was 23 years old and I lived with my good friend Matt Recore. Now, Matt was extremely successful by most people's standards. I rented a room from Matt in his primary residence and that was one of his six homes that he owned. So he had five other houses that he rented out, and he was building a real estate empire, if you will. That was, gosh, I'm 46 now, so it was 23 years. Oh, that was half my life ago. Wild now again. So I'm renting a room from him in one of his six houses. So Matt was very successful, but he wasn't just successful in terms of his, you know, financial success, but he was. To me, success is how much you give back. Like, that's the real measure of someone. If how successful you are, to me is how much have you achieved and then how much have you either helped others achieve or given back to those that might be less fortunate for one reason or another. And Matt led, for example, the basket brigade. Every year. We used to get, usually 15 or 20 of us together the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and we would go to the grocery store. We would spend an hour shopping for turkeys and stuffing and all the fixings, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes and all of it. Then we would create an assembly line and we would make a bunch of Thanksgiving meals. And then Matt had always gotten an address list of people from some sort of nonprofit that were struggling financially. And we would drive all around Sacramento and we would knock on their door and we would just say, hey, we have a gift for you. And we would hand them, I think, two or three bags of groceries, say, this is a full Thanksgiving meal for you for this Thursday. And when they asked who it was from, Matt would instruct us, just tell them it's from somebody that loves them. And if they press, just say, that's all, you know. And so that's what we would do. And by the way, that went on for. I don't know if Matt still does it, but I know, I think for 10 years I did this with him every single Thanksgiving. I'm going on a tangent, but the point is, Matt was someone or is someone that I really admire, I always have admired. He was very successful. Now, the thing that I wanted to share with you that st with Matt is I used to hear him yelling from his bedroom. In fact, I wrote about this in the Miracle morning book. I would hear him yelling from his bedroom. Now, keep in mind, I rented a room from him. It was a two story house on the upstairs. He lived at the end of the upstairs in the master bedroom. And then I lived in a bedroom down the hall. And I would hear him yelling, and I would go, what's Matt need? I would, you know, walk over to his bedroom thinking he was yelling for me. But he wasn't yelling for me. He was yelling to himself. He was yelling things like, I am the voice. I will lead, not follow. I will create, not destroy. Now, Matt was a big Tony Robbins student, and if you are familiar with Tony, those are Tony Robbins declarations. First, I was like, matt's such a weirdo, man. He always talk like he yells at himself all the time. It's like a daily occurrence. So eventually I realized he wasn't yelling for me. But that's when it clicked. He was programming his mind with the mindset, the emotional state, and the beliefs that he needed to create the life that he wanted. And he'd been doing that for years. And it was working. He wasn't crazy. He was just highly intentional. If you struggle to fall asleep or stay asleep, I have a supplement that I take that I've taken for about three years now, virtually every single night. I highly recommend it. It's called Nightcaps by Cured Nutrition. It is a CBN and CBD oil supplement, and CBN supports your body's natural sleep rhythms throughout the night for deep restorative sleep that leaves you feeling refreshed and ready to rise in the morning. Highly recommended. I book in my days with Cured Nutrition. I take their Flow gummies in the morning. I take nightcaps at night. And you can get 20% off of both of those products. As a listener of the Achieve your goals podcast, head over to curednutrition.com HAL that's curednutrition.com HAL and use the discount code HAL for 20% off your entire order. And if you do a subscription, which I do a monthly subscription for both of those products, you get an additional 20% off that stacks on top of the 20% as a listener so you can save a bunch of money and it'll help you fall asleep and stay asleep again. Cured Nutrition, Nightcaps in the evening, and I start my day with Flow gummies every single morning. And I hope these products will help you and enhance your life as they have for mine. Enjoy the rest of the episode. And here's the thing. You fast forward a couple decades I've done personally now, right? I've done thousands of hours of meditation and affirmations and visualization. But sometimes when I sit in silence, my mind doesn't quite quiet. As I said earlier, it questions, am I doing this right? Is this working? Am I wasting time? I'm sure you can relate to that. And it's when I realized that sometimes we need to override silence with intentional verbalization. Is that the word I'm looking for, right? We need to actually lead our mind with our own voice. And so when I speak to myself in a positive way, so either I read my affirmations out loud, even quietly, or I say my prayers out loud, even quietly, right? My family's sleeping, so I'm not like Matt where I'm shouting it out. But when I say my affirmations or I say my prayers out loud, I feel differently, my emotions shift faster, I'm able to redirect my mental and emotional state much more effectively. And if you think about it, it makes sense because if someone is talking to us and they're saying mean things, right, that's going to impact our nervous system, it's going to impact our psychology, it's going to impact our mental and emotional well being. And the same as if someone's saying something positive to us, if they're saying, hey, you're doing a great job, I'm really proud of you. You go, oh, thank you, that feels so good. I'm so appreciate you saying that. And what I realized is that if we can speak to ourselves that way again, not just the thoughts in our head that are bouncing around like a pinball, but actually speaking our affirmations and our prayers out loud, it's talking to ourselves in the least crazy way. It's not crazy. It's actually extremely effective. And here's the thing, this isn't just motivational fluff. Science backs this up. In fact, psychologists call it distanced self talk. So instead of using your own name like I, I am worthy, I am deserving, I am capable, I am committed to blank you, you use your first name. Did I say anyway? I might have spoken that wrong. But you say to yourself, hal, in my case, right, Instead of I've got this, it's Hal, you've got this, Hal, you've overcome this so many times. Think about how powerful you can talk to yourself when you're using your own name. Now where is that voice coming from by the way? Now you might think, well, that's my own voice, right? I would argue that it is your highest consciousness, that it is your, it is spirit, it is your line to the divine. And what I mean by that is our ego, which is in this context our identity, right? So as you're growing up and you're a kid and you think, oh, you know, I am, right? I am Hal, I am, I am, I am a good kid, I am. And then maybe you fail at something, or maybe your parents tell you, hal, you're a bad person, Sarah. I'm going to pick another name other than my own, right, Sarah, you're. You're wrong. You're bad. You shouldn't have done that. Now all of a sudden, when someone tells you using your name, Sarah, you then internalize it as part of your ego, part of your identity. Oh, I am bad or I am stupid or I let people down or I misbehave. Whatever you're told by other people, but the other people are the ones telling you using your first name. And then it becomes part of your identity. So you think about this, where you're actually now taking the reins of your self talk and using your first name to talk to yourself in a way that then will reprogram your identity. It will elevate your consciousness based on the words that you choose. And that's where affirmations are so powerful. You have to have written affirmations, right? Then you read the affirmations to you. Now, for me, there's something I've referenced sometimes on the podcast that I call Divine Downloads. This is wisdom inspired thoughts, nuggets of wisdom that come to me when I am not. I'm not asking, or maybe I'm asking, maybe I'm open for it, but I'm not. Like, I'm not thinking these thoughts. These thoughts are delivered to me, and they're usually for my highest good. And the way they are delivered to me, Divine Downloads is what I call them. In the past, I've called them breakthroughs. Now I call them the Divine Downloads. And Divine Downloads, the thing is, they come to me using my first name, so it's some other voice that is saying them to me. Oh, I wish I had. Gosh darn it, I should have had my journal with me so I could read some of these to you. But they will be something along the lines of how you need to connect with your daughter by spending more time with her in the evenings. Actually, this came up for me recently. How you know, you. Because I, I like to go to bed early. But as my kids are getting older, right. They're teenagers now, they want to stay up late. Well, I. My preference is so strong to go to bed early so I can wake up early, that I recently got a download. In fact, I got it a long time ago, like years ago, or maybe not years, but maybe in the last year. And then it came up again today and it was Hal, you need to be willing to sacrifice your preference of going to bed early to spend quality time with your children for the limited amount of time that they still live at home. And I was like, wow. So that's an example where that's not a pump me up statement, right? That's not how. You're amazing and you're capable and you can overcome anything. Not at all. No, that's Hal. Hey, you need to make some changes because your kids aren't going to be here that much longer. And to me, that voice, you could call it conscience. It's our conscience. It always knows the right thing to do. We've had it since we were a little kid. It always knows the right thing to do. We don't always listen to it. Even as a kid, it's like, hey, don't take that candy. And you're like looking around, nobody sees me. And that voice in your head is like, hey, don't take that candy. And you just shut the voice down. We all do this. Not just as kids, we do it as adults. Right? We know I shouldn't do. Be quiet. And we literally shut out that voice that is trying to guide us toward our highest good. And what I am encouraging and inviting and I'm challenging you to do is to bring that voice to the surface. It's a voice that's been with you since the day you were born. I believe it is. Christian religion would call it the Holy Spirit, right? It's that voice within you. I call it your line to the divine. I call it your highest conscience. I mean, there's, there's lots of different words, but it's that voice inside you that will guide you toward your highest good. And it is always there. But we drown it out with our ego, with our identity that is self limiting. Or we utilize our ego like we actually tap into the ego to just go, no, I want this. I don't care what I, I know that little voice inside of me that I, I, I refuse to listen to it because I want to smoke the cigarette, I want to eat the junk food, I want to have the affair, right? But that voice is always there. Hey, you shouldn't do this, Sarah. You shouldn't do that. You know, John, you shouldn't do this. You know better than this. And we shut the voice out. But if we listen to the voice, always, if we just decide I'm going to start amplifying that voice, I'm going to start listening to it, our lives will improve if we do what our inner voice, our conscious, our highest, our highest self, our spirit, our connection to God, our line to the divine. Call it whatever you want. And again, the Most practical, like non spiritual is your conscience, right? Your conscience. It's always been there. It's always with you. So. Oh, sorry, I'm getting a little passionate. Let me give you a 14 day challenge and we're gonna keep this really simple for the next 14 days. Alternate between on day one, say everything out loud. Say. And again, it can be quietly to yourself. You can murmur, you know, hey, I am. You can whisper to yourself. You don't have to shout it out like my buddy Matt did. Although there's value to that if there's nobody within earshot. Shout. I am grateful for this life that I am living. I am bl. Thank you God. I am so blessed. Look around. I have a roof over my head. I have food in the refrigerator. What in the heck am I upset about all the time? Why do I allow myself to get. This is a conversation with yourself where you're talking to yourself. That voice, that guidance system, you're amplifying your positive voice. All right, let me ask you a question. How many apps are you using for your personal development? Maybe a meditation app like Calmer Headspace, an affirmation app like I Am, or Think Up, a book summary app like Blinkist, a journaling app like 5 Minute Journal, a visualization app like Envision, an exercise app like 7 Minute Workout, and maybe even a habit tracking app to keep it all together. That is a lot to manage and a lot to pay for. What if you could replace all of them with just one app? Yes, it is called the Miracle Morning app and it is essentially seven apps in one. Hundreds of guided meditations and breathwork tracks, a full library of affirmations, plus tools to create your own visualization prompts for 10 key areas of your life. Guided workouts from 2 to 10 minutes long, book and audiobook summaries of top personal and professional development books and a journaling tool with guided prompts. The wheel of life or a blank page to write freely. It simplifies your morning, saves you money, and helps you start every day with clarity, purpose and energy. And it's one of the only apps in this space with a 4.9 out of 5 star rating. Try it free for 7 days. Just search Miracle Morning in your app store or go to miracle morningapp.com to get started. All right, back to the show. So day one. Say everything out loud. Your affirmations, your prayers, your positive self. Talk and even ask questions. Ask for guidance. Ask God for guidance. Ask your subconscious for guidance. I always try to give options in case you're like I don't believe in God or whatever. I want to make sure that this is applicable to every single person. So day one, say everything out loud and day two, do it silently. Don't say it out loud, pray to yourself, say your affirmations to yourself and keep switching back and forth for two weeks for 14 days. Day one, say everything out loud. Day two, keep it silently to yourself. Simple. And each day. So I encourage you to do this during your miracle morning. Each day rate your mood before and after in your journaling practice, right? So during your quote unquote silence practice, you're actually going to swap the s every other day for speaking. So day one, say it out loud. Speaking. Day two, silence. Keep it to yourself and each day rate the impact that that time has on you. Rate your mood, rate your mental and emotional well being before and after. So do this in writing and so you can see on your speaking days how does that verbal processing that out loud guidance and self leadership, self coaching, how does that impact you compared to the days where you do it silently? And by the end of two weeks you'll have your own data set. You'll know whether talking to yourself improves your state or not. And I am confident that it will because it has been night and day for me and for the reasons that I've just shared, right? When people talk to us out loud and they use our name and they talk to us with intensity the way that I just did. Like when I go on my morning walks, I pray out loud, I go, God, thank you for the nature, thank you for these trees. Thank you for this fresh air, thank you for this sunshine. And I hope you can get just hearing me do it right now. How much more effective is that than me just thinking to myself, God, thank you for the trees. Thank you for like when I say it out loud with intensity, it has a far more profound impact on my mental, emotional and my physical nervous system. All right, so that's the challenge. Talk to yourself out loud. Be, you know, be a crazy person. If that's what you think it is, it's not a crazy person. The challenge is for the next two weeks, talk yourself into it. Don't just think positive, speak positively and record a note. It could be on your phone or in your journal or on social media. Tag me. If you try this, I want to hear your results. And remember, silence helps you observe your mind. Quiet your mind, but your voice can lead it. Your voice can lead your mind. That's the miracle of mindful selft talk. All right, until next time, Keep showing up, keep speaking truth to yourself, and keep creating your miracle life, because this is the one life you've been blessed to live. You might as well fulfill your potential. You might as well enjoy every moment. You might as well be at peace with the challenges so they don't rob you of the joy that you deserve. Because you get one life. Make it a miracle. I love you so much and I'll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening. To learn more about the Achieve your Goals podcast and to get access today's show notes, transcript and exclusive content from hal Elrod, visit hallrod.com forward/podcast thanks again for joining us. Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of the Achieve your goals podcast. Sam.