What am I telling myself right now?

There’s a story behind that.

This is your daily message from Chad number 1161 to upgrade your mental game today by telling yourself a better story, because the most important story you hear is the story you tell yourself. And this message is dedicated to Jayden Francis on his birthday. You can get a free copy of my book, The Most Powerful Story in the World, by going to fromchad.gumroad.com. The transcript of this message and hundreds of others are always available at http://www.fromchad.com.

Here’s the upgrade:

You think self-talk is just noise in your head. Upgraded thinking knows it’s the most powerful drug you’ll take all day — and you get to write the prescription.

Here’s the story:

Andre Agassi won 869 professional tennis matches. And he’ll tell you he won a good number of them in the shower. He calls tennis the closest thing to solitary confinement — no coach, no teammate, no timeout, just you and the voice in your head. So in the afternoons before a match, he’d stand in the shower and say crazy things to himself. Over and over. He’d say them until he believed them. He credits the wins to that ritual.

Then he tells you the other side. One day he read a columnist who declared, flatly, that Agassi simply wasn’t a champion. And he nearly cracked under it — because Agassi handed his story to a stranger sitting behind a keyboard whom he didn’t know and who didn’t know him, and let that man narrate who he was.

You are talking to yourself all day whether you plan to or not. You might be thinking, “Chad, I don’t talk to myself. That’s what crazy people do.” Well, that thought you just had is what I’m talking about. The only question is who’s holding the pen — you, or some voice you picked up from someone who doesn’t know you, love you, or have your best interest at heart.

Brad Jacobs has built eight companies with more than a billion dollars of revenue each. He believes mindset is the most important financial tool in all of his companies. He opens his book not with strategy but with one question to run all day long: What am I telling myself right now? Most of us never once stop to check.

This podcast started as audio texts I sent to all the kids each morning. The most important story you hear is the one you tell yourself is the maxim I shared on that first voice message. All we have is story. You can’t change the past, but you can change the story you tell yourself about it. You can’t control anyone around you, but you can control the story of how you respond. You can’t foresee the future, but you can write the story of what to expect.

Rick Rubin says doubting your work makes you better — “this isn’t as good as it can be” sharpens you. But doubting yourself — “I’m not a champion” — only leads to hopelessness. You can talk yourself all the way to excellence. But only through one of those two doors.

So get in the shower today. Ask the question. And when you catch the voice running away with the story, take the pen back. The better story to tell yourself is, “Today I will focus on telling myself the story I need to hear.”

Tell me the story you tell yourself to fromchadsmith@gmail.com. Send someone a text and ask them, “What’s the most important story you’ll ever hear?”