The Speech That Changed How I Talk to Myself

Elizabeth Gilbert at the Paramount Theatre

Last year, I heard a speech by

Elizabeth Gilbert

that changed my life. I don’t say this lightly. Because of this speech, I started a journaling practice has, slowly, woven its way into my thought patterns and started to change how I talk to myself.  

The thoughts in my head are rarely kind. Instead of seeing them as unkind, I usually label them as worry or stress or anxiety. Why did you say that? How did you miss that? Why can’t you understand this as fast as so-and-so? He clearly doesn’t like you. I think I need to keep worrying to get better. To be better. I often miss the fact that I am talking to myself in the way I would never—ever—talk to a friend. Or to a stranger.

Then, in May 2022, I heard Liz speak at the Paramount Theatre in Denver. Liz’s book on creativity Big Magic has transformed my relationship with fear when I am writing and so has become one of the most meaningful books I’ve read. I’d been waiting for years for this speech (delayed a few times because of the pandemic). Liz came out, and I could feel the room’s collective blood pressure lower. She was relaxed, and we were relaxed, and she talked about how rare it is for a woman to know her own mind and feelings well enough to actually be relaxed.

Near the end, Liz mentioned a practice that she called two-way prayer—a practice that has helped her live into the mantra of being a relaxed woman. This means she journals in the morning, first thing, starting from the question, “Dear love, what would you have me know today?” And here’s what I’ve found to be the most powerful part: She responds by writing to herself in the second person. She calls herself “you.” (Liz has started a newsletter called

Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert

that shares this practice each Sunday in the most soul-satisfying, heartwarming way. I cannot recommend it strongly enough.)

I started one of these journals the next day. For a year, I wrote in it sporadically. I found it helpful, but I didn’t write consistently enough for it to be truly meaningful.

Then, in the last three months, I’ve started to write in this journal every morning—on good days, before looking at my phone. This timing is not a coincidence. When AFTER ANNE launched, my mean inner voice was at its loudest it had been in years. I was scavenging for tools.

Dear one, my entries start.

Cheesy, I tell myself as I’m writing this. What will the lawyers reading this newsletter think?

Then I think, What if it helps even one of them the way it has helped you?

Slowly, I’ve gotten more comfortable writing this way. It helps to have a daughter for whom my affection pours out. She brings out a side of me that was always bubbling under the surface. When I’m stuck, I think about how I would talk to her. Eyes watering. You are getting closer to what you mean.  

It’s a powerful brain hack, a switch to the second person. Immediately, I am forced to talk to myself differently. I write in the way I would talk to a close friend about whatever is coming up for me. I tell myself that I don’t need to be the best or the fastest or the most liked even really good at anything. That trying is enough. That not trying is enough too.

Just in the last month, I’ve started to notice something different when I’m in situations that trigger anxiety, worry, and stress. From time to time, a voice inserts itself in the old, familiar thoughts. It is not a loud voice, not forceful, but not quiet either.

Dear one, it begins.