Imagine you've just completed an eleven-hour flight to a new country. When you step out of the airplane door, you are instructed to go down a flight of metal stairs (wait, where is the little bridge thing that connects to the airport?) and board a bus that will take you to the terminal. As you navigate through the airport, you quickly realize that everything is in Arabic (uh oh, this was not on the foreign language elective list in high school or college).

You manage to follow the other passengers to baggage claim and retrieve your bag (whew, my bag made it... what a relief). After you get your bag, you follow the signs with pictures of cars and make your way outside to call an Uber. Your Uber arrives, the driver loads your luggage, and you're on your way to the hotel (insert sigh of relief).

Your Uber driver drops you off at the hotel, and you head to check in. At the front desk, you pat your pockets and discover your phone is missing (OH NO!). Panic sets in because EVERYTHING is on your phone -- credit cards, your sleep and fitness data from your smartwatch, passwords to everything important in life, ten years' worth of pictures that you haven't backed up to your computer (oh no, when was the last time I backed my phone up?), and most importantly, your translator app!

Your heart begins racing, your palms get sweaty, and your worry thoughts kick in.

"What did I just get myself into?"

"How am I going to survive this trip?"

"How am I going to get home?"

"What am I going to do?"

Then...

You catch a glimpse of yourself in a mirror, one of your visual cues, and you are reminded to take a deep breath and recite:

"Slow down. You've got this. You have everything you need to be successful in this situation."

As your thoughts begin to slow down (thank you, prefrontal cortex), you remember that you used the phone to book the Uber. At a minimum, the phone is likely still in the Uber. Then you remember that Uber has a "lost item" feature that helps passengers recover misplaced belongings.

Amid the mental chaos, someone on the hotel staff notices your distress and comes over to help. They speak some broken English and help you get to a hotel computer. You navigate to the Uber website, find the icon that allows you to change the language, locate the "lost item" section, and submit a ticket.

You think to yourself:

"Okay, I am going to figure this out. Everything is going to be fine."

Introduction

How do you anticipate you would respond in a situation like the one you just read? What happens to your thoughts in a novel or challenging situation? Do you default to unhelpful patterns of thinking?

"Oh my gosh! Everything is going wrong. What do I do?!"

Or do you have a few go-to statements that slow your mind down before responding to the situation at hand?

"Pause. You've got this. Take a breath. Slow down."

If you have not been intentional about training your mind and monitoring your self-talk, you likely have a default pattern of thinking that has remained largely unchanged for decades. If you're a parent, coach, educator, or mentor, chances are you've unknowingly (or perhaps knowingly) passed down your self-talk patterns to the young people around you.

Now, you may be wondering, "How would my self-talk become someone else's?"

To better understand how this process works, it is helpful to understand two concepts: internal dialogue (self-talk) and modeling.

"...children solve practical tasks with the help of their speech, as well as their eyes and hands."

— Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society (1978)

Talk that Self-Talk

You may have heard the term self-talk before, but have you ever wondered where it comes from or whether you have any control over it?

Self-talk, sometimes referred to as "internal dialogue," "egocentric speech," or "the little voice in your head," begins to develop between the ages of 2 and 7 (Danilov & Mihailova, 2022).

Jean Piaget first introduced the concept of egocentric speech in his 1923 book The Language and Thought of the Child. Piaget believed that egocentric speech was an immature function of children in which they only perceived the world from their perspective.

Lev Vygotsky later expanded upon Piaget's early research and argued that egocentric speech serves an important function in higher-order thinking, including problem solving. Vygotsky's Mind in Society (1978) summarizes the developmental processes children undergo as they integrate the complex behaviors of language acquisition and higher-order thinking. The theory posits that speech is an integral component of problem-solving ability. Furthermore, it suggests that, early in development, outside observers can see the relationship between children's use of language and their ability to plan and regulate behavior. 

Vygotsky determined that children learn to use language as a means of problem solving and self-regulation. Simply put, the foundation of self-talk is established during early language development, and we continue to use it throughout life as a tool for solving everyday problems.

In addition to being an everyday problem-solving tool, athletes use self-talk for motivation, confidence building, composure regulation, and self-cueing (Fritsch et al., 2022). The most decorated gymnast in U.S. Olympic history, Simone Biles, is reported to use the self-talk cues “Confidence” and “You have this,” before she steps on the mat for competition. In a 2026 interview on the Mind the Games podcast, LeBron James discussed how managing thoughts was critical to building and maintaining confidence throughout his 20-plus-year professional career. On numerous occasions, Phil Jackson has discussed the benefits of intentional self-talk as a tool to reset focus. Likewise, throughout his decades-long coaching career, Nick Saban became known for encouraging athletes and leaders to challenge negative self-talk to remove self-imposed limitations. Examples such as these demonstrate that perhaps an unintended benefit of helpful self-talk is improved confidence. 

Confidence is often viewed as something athletes either have or do not have. In reality, confidence is built through repeated experiences of successfully navigating challenges. Self-talk serves as a bridge between challenge and confidence. When young athletes learn to respond to adversity with statements such as, "I've handled difficult situations before," or "I can figure this out," they reinforce a belief in their ability to cope. Over time, these repeated cognitive experiences become the foundation of durable confidence that extends beyond sport.

Modeling and Social Learning

Modeling, an important concept in developmental psychology, is a component of social learning.

Social Learning Theory, developed by Albert Bandura, describes modeling as a form of observational learning in which the observer learns a new behavior after an exemplary model demonstrates that behavior (Bandura & Bussey, 1999).

Social Learning Theory suggests that learning requires both imaginal and verbal (cognitive) components (Bandura, 1971).

You can think of the imaginal component as imagining or visualizing yourself completing a task, while the verbal or cognitive component involves how you talk yourself through the process (hello, self-talk!).

If you're curious about how modeling works, after you finish reading this article, go back to the beginning and read it again. During your second read, you'll notice how I modeled verbalizing my self-talk while describing the experience of losing a phone in a foreign country.

I intentionally included my self-talk throughout the story in either parentheses or quotation marks. For example:

"Wait, where is the little bridge thing that connects to the airport?"

While I could have written the story without including my thoughts, it was important for me to demonstrate how subtle self-talk can be and the role it plays in problem solving.

I encourage you to think about the various interactions young athletes have each day.

What messages are the adults around them communicating after a game?

How are coaches speaking to them during practice?

In what ways are they encouraged or discouraged from verbalizing their thoughts or internal experiences?

More importantly, how do they observe the adults around them navigating novel or complex situations?

Are athletes included in conversations about negotiation and decision-making?

Is anyone ensuring they have a full understanding of what is happening?

For many athletes, life operates on autopilot, and much of the behind-the-scenes work is completed without their awareness. While the intent may be to allow them to "focus on the sport," their exclusion can deprive them of important observational learning opportunities.

Bringing It Together

As humans, we are naturally drawn to use language to solve life's challenges. As early as age two, children utilize language to navigate their experiences, both big and small.

Self-talk is a multipurpose tool that can be used for self-regulation, motivation, confidence building, and attentional focus (e.g., cueing).

Parents, coaches, and mentors play a significant role in the development of self-talk among the youth with whom they regularly interact.

Modeling is a component of Social Learning Theory that suggests much of what we learn comes from observing the people around us. Adults who support youth athletes have an opportunity to shape the next generation's self-talk through their daily interactions and behaviors.

For example, adults can encourage young athletes to vocalize their internal experiences, include them in negotiation and decision-making conversations, and model language that supports self-regulation:

"You have everything you need to be successful in this situation."

Helpful and encouraging self-talk may be one of the closest things we have to a cheat code for building confidence in young athletes.

Below are a few practical exercises that can help build confidence through self-talk and problem solving in novel situations.

Practical Exercises

1. Establish a Season Budget

Establish a season budget with your child. Ideally, you would come to a consensus regarding a dollar amount and determine what the child is responsible for purchasing.

For example, they may be responsible for food while traveling, personal items (e.g., toothpaste, deodorant), new gear (e.g., mouth pieces, cleats, uniforms).

Either monthly or bi-weekly, distribute the predetermined amount and ensure that everyone adheres to the agreed-upon guidelines.

This exercise allows young people to develop fiscal responsibility, money management skills, negotiation skills, and decision-making abilities.

2. Explain a Routine Step-by-Step

Ask your child to walk you through their pre-workout or pregame routine, step-by-step like how you would see the steps of a recipe.

Encourage them to include details from all five senses:

• What do you see on your way to practice?

• What sensations do you feel in your body before practice or competition?

• What sounds do you hear (e.g., air conditioning, fans cheering, your heartbeat)?

In this exercise, you should receive information ad nauseam. The goal is for the young person to be as detailed as possible.

This activity serves as both a mindfulness exercise and a problem-solving exercise.

3. Prepare for Away Game Travel

Invite your child to plan for an away game.

Planning should include researching transportation, lodging, food costs, activities, and other logistical considerations.

The logistics of planning a trip can be quite cumbersome, and many young people are excluded from the planning process. Often, their primary responsibility is simply showing up and behaving.

By including them in the process, they begin to understand the mental gymnastics required to organize something meaningful.

Although these exercises are sport focused, the skills developed through them will transfer across situations (like recovering a phone in a foreign country).

I also invite you to get creative and develop your own problem-solving exercises. The goal is to introduce your young person to novel situations or challenges that require them to think their way toward a solution.

An added benefit is that you can support the development of real-world skills within a controlled environment.

Moving forward, I hope you will be mindful of your own self-talk and the influence you have in shaping the self-talk of the young athletes and people around you.

And if you're wondering whether the person in the opening story got their phone back, they did!

Well... sort of.

It wasn't actually a phone.

It was a pair of sunglasses.

Losing sunglasses isn't quite as anxiety-provoking for most people, so I added a little flair to get the adrenaline pumping.