The Melanin Unicorn Podcast

What You Speak is Who You Will Become

• Kerry • Season 2 • Episode 6

Share episode

Send us a text

Words aren’t just noise—they’re instructions your brain follows. We explore how everyday self-talk quietly wires your beliefs, steers your choices, and shapes the results you see at work, in business, and in relationships. From the first breath to the closing gratitude, we peel back the science and the soul of language: why negative scripts feel automatic, how neural pathways grow with repetition, and what it takes to replace harsh inner commentary with brave, useful words.

We ground the conversation in real life. Picture the big presentation: the difference between “I’ll blow it” and “I’m ready” shows up in your body, your prep, and your performance. We unpack a simple, repeatable framework—awareness, reframing, affirmations—and share how to capture your exact negative phrases, flip them into truthful, supportive lines, and loop them until they stick. You’ll hear practical tools you can use today, from journaling prompts to recording your own affirmations and playing them while you fall asleep so your subconscious adopts the story you actually want to live.

Along the way, we connect dots between elite athletes visualizing wins, entrepreneurs betting on a vision, and anyone training their mind to meet the moment. The thread is consistent practice, not perfection. We also open up about our own routines—mindset coaching, nightly affirmation loops, and the small shifts that add up to confidence, clarity, and momentum. If you’re ready to retire the inner critic and speak as the future you, this conversation gives you the language and the steps to start.

If this resonated, share it with someone who needs a kinder mirror today. Subscribe, rate, and leave a review so more people can find the show, and tell us: what’s the “I am” you’re choosing next?

Kerry:

Hey, hey, hey, my unicorn tribe. Welcome back to the Melanin Unicorn Podcast. The podcast where we as black women explore the power of thoughts, words, and actions in shaping our lives. I'm your host, Kerry, and I'm so excited to dive into today's topic, how speaking good or bad about yourself manifests into your life. This is a big one because the way we talk to ourselves, both internally and out loud, has a direct impact on our mindset, our actions, and ultimately the reality we create for ourselves. So grab a power water, tea, coffee, wine, green juice, or whatever your drink of choice is. We're gonna take a deep breath, and we are about to get into this episode. Let's start off with a question, shall we? How do you speak to yourself? Are you your biggest cheerleader, or are you your harshest critic? Most of us don't even realize how powerful our self-talk is because it feels so normal. But here's the truth: the words you speak, good or bad, are like seeds. And they eventually grow into the reality of your life. So let's break this down. First off, this isn't just a woo-woo talk, okay? So let's get that out the way. There's real science behind the impact of self-talk. Studies in psychology and neuroscience show that our thoughts and words create neural pathways in the brain. The more we repeat a thought or a belief, the stronger the pathway becomes. Over time, these pathways shape our habits, emotions, and decisions. So, if you are constantly telling yourself I'm not good enough or I always mess things up, your brain starts believing that that is your truth. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, on the flip side of all of that, if you affirm things like I am capable, I'm learning and growing every day, or even something as simple as I deserve good things, your brain begins to create a reality where those statements are true. So now let's talk about how this shows up in our real lives. Just imagine you're preparing for a big presentation at work. Or if you're an entrepreneur, you are preparing a presentation because you want to attract a client to into your business. If your self-talk is negative, I'm gonna mess this up, I'm gonna mess this up, everyone's going to see that I'm a fraud. What happens? What happens? I will tell you, you start to feel anxious, maybe even paralyzed, you start sweating, all of a sudden you can't sit still, you're back and forth, your thoughts are literally spiraling. That anxiety affects how you prepare, and when it's time to present, you are so consumed by your self-doubt that you are less focused and more prone to mistakes. Now, how many times has this happened to you, to me? I can think of plenty of times where that happened to me, whether it was during exams or job interviews or you know, um doing work on my job, yes, and I'm pretty sure you have great examples of your own as well. But what if you flip the script? Instead of tearing yourself down, you tell yourself, I've got this, or I've worked hard and I'm ready. That kind of positive reinforcement doesn't just make you feel better in the moment, it boosts your confidence and allows you to show up as your best self. And the results, a presentation you can be proud of and know that you nailed it, high-fiving yourself, getting in that mirror and saying, girl, queen, you did that. You did that. So, why does negative self-talk feel so automatic for a lot of us? If positive self-talk is so powerful, right? Why is it so hard for us to do? The truth is, many of us are conditioned from a young age to focus on our flaws. And you will know exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe it's from criticism we received, societal pressures, or even the way failure is framed as a bad thing. Instead of what it's truly meant to be, it is an opportunity to learn and to grow and to refocus. Over time, we internalize these messages, and they become our default mode, unfortunately. But here's the good news: you can change it. It's not easy, it's going to take a lot of practice, but it is absolutely possible. Let me tell you, there's some things that you can start with. Affirmations are a big thing. Now, I know that a lot of people will say, Oh, I can't do affirmations because it doesn't it doesn't feel authentic to me, it doesn't feel real, it doesn't feel like that's me. Affirmations starts off like that for everybody. But here is the key, like I talked about earlier, positive self-talk creates brand new neural pathways in your brain. So when you are saying to yourself, I am brilliant, I am beautiful, I am powerful, I am those two words alone, I and am are creation. Because I am creates the next thing that you say out of your mouth, right? Like I am financially secure, I am blessed, I am happy, I am joyful, and even if you don't believe it in the beginning, because it's gonna take a while, it's gonna take a while, but in order for you, like with anything else, it's repetition, it's repetition, it's repetition, even when you don't feel like it, even when you roll out the bed, even when you look at yourself and just say, Oh my gosh, I look a hot mess. Instead of you saying, I look a hot mess, you say, I am hot, honey, I am beautiful, I am gorgeous. It is all about recalibrating your brain. Those neural pathways that need to be created starts with the I and the Am. Okay? So you can write your affirmations down, right? If you feel like oh I cannot, I can't write ten. The the most I can do at the moment is write three, then you write three. Or you may say, oh boy, the most I can do is write one. Then you write one. And you take that one, or you take those three, and this is what you will repeat to yourself throughout the day. Throughout the day. Nobody has to know what it is that you're doing, what you're saying to yourself. You can even record your affirmations and you can listen to them. A great app to use if you have the iPhone is the Parrot app. And it's what it says, parrot, like the bird. And you can record your own affirmations, and you can set it to how long you want to listen to it. So it goes to, I don't know, like one second, or but all the way up to an hour, or you don't have to choose any time, you can just let it go on looping. And that also helps, right? Because those words that are now in your going into your ear is not only going into your your conscious, but where we really want it to go, we want it to go into our subconscious. Because our subconscious doesn't know if it's true or not. What your subconscious will do is those affirmations that you are saying to yourself, your subconscious will now make it your reality. Your subconscious will bring opportunities of the things that you are saying positively about yourself. You understand? Okay. So if you are speaking negatively all the time about yourself, and then you're wondering why, why are all these these bad things happening, or why can't I why do I feel like I can't catch a break? It is because this is what your subconscious is reflecting back to you because your because your subconscious doesn't know if it's truth or if it's a lie, what it will do is it will bring things into your reality that reflects what you have been saying about yourself. So now, how do we change that self-talk? Well, I have a few steps, have a few things that you can start to do to start shifting the way you speak to yourself. Awareness is number one. Awareness is number one. The first step is to notice the negative things you're saying about yourself. Start by keeping a journal or even using a notes app on your phone, whichever operating system that you are um abusing with your phone, and jot down those moments of negative self-talk. Because oftentimes we are not aware. Consciously, we're not aware. Because we've done it for so long, that is a part of our life. That is our that is a part of our psyche, okay? And that is our reality that we've created for ourselves. So joting down those moments of your negative self-talk brings awareness to what you are saying, okay? So that's half the battle. That's half the battle. Number two is reframing, reframing. So when you catch yourself saying something negative, because once you become aware, then when you are about to say something negative, you can boom, you can catch it. You can catch it, and you pause and then you reframe it, right? So here's a reframing. If you're thinking, oh my god, I'm so bad at this, try switching it to I'm still learning, and that's okay. Right? Or I'm so bad at this. Now you're switching it. I am so great at this. I am so wonderful at this. It's all about reframing, but we can't reframe if we are not aware of what we are saying out of our mouths or what we're thinking about ourselves. So your first is to have awareness, your second is to refrain. You're reframing, you're starting to reframe. Number three are affirmations. So you're going to create a list of positive affirmations that resonate with you. And again, like I said, if you if you can only do one affirmation, or you can only do three or five, that's okay. There's no judgment, and it does not say anything bad about you, or or that you are less than, because that is a lie. Okay. So with your affirmations, you're you're you will create a list of positive affirmations that resonate with you. Okay? So these could be things like I am worthy, I am capable of overcoming challenges. I am proud of my progress. You can say them out loud every morning, or whenever you need a boost, or if you don't want to say it out loud and you want to just play back your own voice with your affirmations, you can use the Parrot app in the iTunes Store, and it is free. I don't there is one also, if you are um with the Google store, I don't know what it is at the moment, but I will leave it in the show notes so that can be something for you to get as well. And I believe that app is also free. Okay, because we love free honey. Okay, okay. So stories of transformation, right? We can have some examples. Think about athletes who visualize their success before a big game, right? They're not just doing it for fun, they are training their brains to believe in their ability to win. Again, creating neural pathways in the brain. Okay, which speaks to the subconscious, and the subconscious will create the scenarios, will create the plan needed for these athletes to win their big game, right? And the same applies to entrepreneurs who take risks and persevere because they believe in their vision, and that is it. That belief is there. That belief is there. That's why you can look and you can see where it seems like, oh, you know, well, some people they just started and then everything just boom, just took off of them. Or, you know, whether they are entrepreneurs, whether they are working a job, whether they are athletes, uh, whether they are authors, uh, whether they are artists, whether they're actors, whether they are um they're they they are on the stage play, right? They they are doing plays, you know, on Broadway. And we think that things just happen for them overnight, but that is not the case. The thing is, they have been training their minds, they have been creating new neural pathways in their brain, and the subconscious shows them and presents opportunities for them to succeed. Now, you need to recognize when those opportunities are being presented. Because sometimes if you're so caught up, you know, in your mind with the negative self-talk and things like that, when things are presented to you, you can't see it because you see it as a trick or a ploy of the enemy. And that's not that's not true. So I've even experienced this in my own life, right? Um, going from like the negative self-talk, the battles and things like that, to at one time I got like a a coach who it was a mindset coach. She was a mindset coach. And that is when I began my journey into transforming from going from awareness to reframing to affirmations to seeing things positively play out in my life now. And the reason why I also brought up that paradapp is because I I downloaded it, I have recorded my own affirmations, and I have several that I've made. And what I do is after I've done my devotions at night and I prayed, guess what? Guess what goes into my ear at night as I'm falling asleep? My affirmations. Whichever one I have chosen, my affirmation. So it is playing, and my subconscious has drinks it in, and then it presents to me the things that I have been positively saying about myself. I can only tell you this is because I've been there. Okay. My journey of manifesting into my new life has started in 2023. That's when it has, that's when it has begun in 2023. We are now two years in, and I can see and feel and taste my life transforming. So your words are powerful. They are not just sounds or thoughts, they are the building blocks of your reality. So the next time you catch yourself saying something negative about who you are or what you can do, pause. Pause. Go back to the three on how to change yourself talk. Awareness, number one, reframing, number two, affirmations, number three. Then choose to speak to yourself with kindness, encouragement, and love. Because the way you talk to yourself today will shape your life for tomorrow and beyond. So we have come to the end of our episode here, and I just want to thank you so much, and I'm so grateful for you tuning in and going on this journey with me. You know, the unicorn tribe is unmatched, and I love that. I so love that. I am honored that you have tuned in to the Melon and Unicorn Podcast and have listened to this episode. And if you have found value, please share it with someone who could use a little reminder about the power of self-talk. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And until next time, take care of yourself and speak kindly to your soul. Have an amazing, marvelous, and magical day. I love you. Speak with you soon. Bye,

Contributor

Kerry

Host