# What To Say When You Talk To Yourself: The Book That Rewired My Mindset

> Source: [https://icharles.com/articles/what-to-say-when-you-talk-to-yourself-the-book-that-rewired-my-mindset](https://icharles.com/articles/what-to-say-when-you-talk-to-yourself-the-book-that-rewired-my-mindset) (canonical)
> Author: Chuck — iCharles, https://icharles.com
> Published: 2015-02-16 · Updated: 2026-07-07

## Why I picked this up

I've read a stack of mindset books — Think and Grow Rich, As a Man Thinketh, The Success Principles, The Power of Habit, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, You Were Born Rich. Good books. I nodded along with all of them. "It's your mindset." "As a man thinketh, so is he." I heard it, I even repeated it to other people, and I still didn't get it. Then, like the cliché goes, when the student is ready, the teacher shows up — I stumbled onto a video that pointed me to What To Say When You Talk To Yourself by Dr. Shad Helmstetter, and something clicked that none of those other books managed to click.

This is my favorite book of all time. Ten out of ten. I'd put it ahead of everything else on that shelf.

## Fix the mindset before you fix the habit

The first half of the book is Helmstetter explaining why motivation doesn't work, why diets don't work, and honestly why most self-help "to-do" books don't work. His answer: you can hand someone a plan, but if their mindset isn't lined up with the outcome, the plan doesn't stick. That's why someone who wins a million dollars in the lottery ends up broke again — their mindset was never built for wealth, so the money doesn't stay.

I saw this in my own life before I could name it. I was eating like garbage and kept telling myself I needed "a diet." Diets don't work because a diet is temporary by definition — your mind knows it's temporary, so it just waits it out. What worked was treating it as a lifestyle change instead: get to the gym, lift weights, do the cardio. That shift is part of why I'm now signed up for the New York City Marathon and nine other races next year, volunteering included. Same logic applies to quitting smoking or anything else — you don't manage the behavior, you change the mind underneath it.

## You have to think your way into wealth first

Money was the one that really got me. I'd read Think and Grow Rich and nodded at the title without ever understanding the mechanism. Helmstetter's version is blunter: think of yourself as wealthy right now, even while your bank account says otherwise, and the money starts to follow. That sounds like nonsense until you sit with it. It was nonsense to me two years ago. It was still nonsense a couple of months ago. This book is what finally made it make sense — mindset isn't a bonus step before you build wealth, it's the first one.

## Reprogram the subconscious, not the conscious mind

The back half of the book moves from "here's why" to "here's what to actually do," and this is the part I've kept using. Your conscious mind knows where you are right now — I know I'm in my apartment in New York City, I know there's a staircase up to the second level. Your subconscious mind is a different animal. It's running your fear, your sense of what you deserve, whether you actually believe you're capable of being wealthier, fitter, better. You don't talk your way past that with willpower alone. You have to feed it something else.

So now, most nights, I put affirmations in my ears and fall asleep listening to them — wealth, fitness, success, whatever I'm working on that month. The point isn't to convince my conscious mind of anything. It's to get past it, straight into the subconscious, while I'm asleep and it isn't arguing back.

A few things I'm still applying from it:

- Treat the goal as a lifestyle shift, not a temporary program
- Picture yourself as already having the outcome, not working toward it
- Feed the subconscious on purpose — I use nightly affirmations through earbuds

## Who should read this

If you're about to pick up another to-do book — another diet plan, another productivity system, another "10 steps to X" — read this one first. I mean that literally: read it before the others, because it's the reason the others don't work for most people. I liked it enough that I emailed Helmstetter about attending one of his live courses down in Fort Lauderdale. He actually wrote back himself. I've got a wedding that same week, so I'm still figuring out if there's a later session — but the book on its own was worth it. Next up, I'm covering Thoughts or Things.