It’s probably more like changing the CD or my iPod downloads now, but whatever the medium, the analogy is that I’ve just got to change the conversation in my head. Sometimes I hear a single voice, sometimes a committee, and sometimes it’s a full blown mass choir chanting me into submission. Unfortunately, lately the tune is almost never a good one.

I’d been aware of the voices for awhile. After all, they almost never shut up. I was also aware that I conversed with them from time to time, out loud, but always when I was alone. Or so I thought.

One evening, when my daughter was home from school for the weekend, we had assumed our usual position for the hair-doing ritual. She’d just washed her medusa-like dread locks, and it was now time for me to groom them.

This is a ritual we both relish. We lay out the tools like a surgeon preparing for a major operation: warm water spray bottle, hair cream and oil, small scissors, hair clips, two towels, something to drink and perhaps a light snack. She plants herself between my knees, propped up on a couple of pillows on the carpet with one towel around her shoulders. Then I separate the locks, taking the scissors to snip the ones that have begun to spider web together near the roots. Next, I section the hair and oil her scalp; spritz the locks with warm water, and roll each one between my palms before clamping two at time to her head with a silver hair clip.

It is such a labor of love for me. Her hair is my garden that I have been tending with care and feeding with natural nutrients and affection all her life. Sometimes we watch a movie while I am doing her hair. But because we are still on our low information diet, this time the cable is turned off. So she dozed in the quiet while I teased dreams out of her head.

A day later she heard me murmuring as I was rattling around in the kitchen and asked me what I’d said. I told her I was just talking to myself. She replied that I’d done that while I was grooming her hair, and it sounded like I was having an argument with someone because I was muttering, huffing in exasperation and heatedly cussing.

Oh snap! I had no idea I was doing that out loud. I didn’t even remember what I was fussing about. But it gave me irrefutable notice that my inner dialogue is more a heated argument. What must I be saying to myself?! Probably the snappy comebacks to questions or comments I’d received but had not had the courage or presence of mind to deliver in the moment. Perhaps I was using the replay button on my mental CD to flesh out my retorts to positions and opinions voiced by others. It’s likely I was putting folk in their place that had previously annoyed me. But more probably I was talking to myself with impatience, disdain and condemnation. Ugh.

Besides being embarrassed to have been swearing like a sea witch in front of my daughter (yes, she gave me a literal replication of my discourse, thank you very much!), I was concerned that I was not even aware of it.

Scientists have already proven the power of Neuro-lingustic programming (NLP), interpersonal communication, to shape behavioral outcomes. Using the power of positive self talk and visualization has delivered the critical advantage to Olympic gold medalists and World Series, Super Bowl and NBA champs. Whatever messages we repeat over time create grooves in our brain, making it easier for future thoughts to follow the same tried and true paths, whether they are self enhancing thoughts or not.

I remember hearing the comedian and social satirist Dick Gregory talk about visiting Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight training camp once when he was preparing for his second bout with Ken Norton. He said he saw Ali’s lips moving during one of his runs, and as Greg got closer, he realized Ali was nearly inaudibly chanting, “Norton must fall, Norton must fall.” I have a photo at home of the champ inscribed with the words “I am the greatest. I said it even before I knew that I was.” We all witnessed the power of Ali’s self talk. He is arguably the greatest fighter of all time.

It’s high time I become more conscious of my self-talk, no matter to whom I am speaking. It’s high time I bath my neural pathways and brain synapses with messages of faith, confidence and strength, so that I am saturated from the inside out in a sea of support and self love. Never mind the people around me; I keep my own company all the time. There’s no let up on the internal discourse. So it’s high time I erase the negative tape, turn the record over, switch the eight-track, change the CD, and press play with respect when I talk to me.