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Most people would never call a friend lazy, yet they say it to themselves all the time.

Your explanatory style (internal, permanent, or global) shapes how fast you bounce back.

Naming a thought instead of believing it creates distance from negative self-talk.

Small shifts in how you talk to yourself can lead to real changes in behavior over time.

My parents are in a cult.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but they do play a lot of pickleball, which is, at the least, cult-adjacent. Ashley (my wife) and I have played against them many times, and despite their arthritis, knee injuries, and one rigid big toe, we have never come out on top.

It’s actually embarrassing, and now you all get to share in my shame. In our last game, after we came closer than we ever have to winning, my mom told me one of her cult pickleball stories. One of her fellow picklers was having a bad game and was verbally beating herself up about it. My mom looked at her and said, “Hey, don’t talk to my friend like that!”

As moms often do, she taught me a lesson without meaning to. Far too often, we run this same negative internal dialogue on ourselves.

“I always quit.” “What’s the point? I’ll just fail again.” “I’m not disciplined enough for this.” “What’s wrong with me?” “I’m lazy.”

For many of us, these are our default stories, our explanatory style for past behavior. And that explanatory style tends........

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