1) The document describes a case study of Simone, a mature aged university student who wants to study for 1.5 hours per night between 6-7:30pm at least 4 times a week but is struggling to do so. 2) She has monitored her study behavior for a week and found she only studied for 10-24 minutes per session, often leaving the table distracted by other tasks like eating or making coffee. 3) The case study is being used to demonstrate how to help Simone improve her self-talk and acquire the desired study behavior using techniques like identifying unhelpful thoughts, triggers for distraction, and formulating more functional self-talk.

1. Dr Tim Baker
tim@winnersatwork.com.au
www.winnersatwork.com.au
Improving
Self-talk

2. Unit 1—Adopting a Growth
Mindset
Unit 2—Focus on Strengths
Unit 3—Regulating Emotions
Unit 4—Reducing Stress
Unit 5—Mastering
Mindfulness
Unit 6—Improving Self-Talk

3. What is
mindfulness?
Practising
mindfulness
Self-
awareness

5. Case Study
Simone is a mature aged student in her
first year of university. Simone is
concerned about the amount of time she
studies. The issue of concern is the
difficulty she has studying the chapters
set for reading. She is finding that
material particularly difficult but has
heard that operant conditioning may
help.
Desired behaviour: She wants to study
between 6pm and 7:30pm each night at
least four times a week.

6. Case Study
• At 6pm Simone sits down at the kitchen table with her text in
front of her. Ten minutes into her study hour she looks up at the
fridge and sees a plate of pudding looming in front of her. She
begins to feel hungry. She eats the pudding and her hunger is
allayed.
• She sits down at the table and finds herself yawning. The coffee
filter is on the bench and in front of her. She gets up and puts the
kettle on the boil. While she is waiting, she decides to catch a
few minutes of news on TV. The newsreader is reporting a story
of a scandal involving a famous person. Six minutes later she
hears the kettle boiling. She rushes back to the kitchen and
pours water into a coffee filter. Then rushes back to the TV room
to catch the end of the story.
• Returning to the kitchen, she looks at the clock – where has all
the time gone, it is now 35 minutes into her study hour. She
remembers her favourite show on TV is going to start at 7pm and
her planned study hour and a half has been a failure.

7. Case Study
• Simone has monitored her study
behaviour for the past week. Her
study time in minutes and the
number of times she left the table
for any reason was:
• Monday 10 min (5)
• Tuesday 8 min (6)
• Wednesday 24 min (3)
• Thursday 10 min (5)

8. Analysis
1. What are the factors triggering Simone’s
behaviour.
2. What are consequences of continuing
this behaviour?
3. How might you consider getting rid of the
undesired behaviour?
4. How might Simone acquire and maintain
the desired behaviour?

9. Self-talk
Summarise the current situation in the
first row of the table. Predict what
behaviour is likely to follow from
Simone’s current self-talk. Then
dispute Simone’s self-talk – try to
formulate new self-talk that is true and
facilitates goal attainment (i.e., study
behaviour).
Current
self-talk
Current
feelings
Current
behaviour
Consequences
Functional
self-talk
Functional
feelings
Desired
behaviour
Consequences

10. Self-talk
1. Individually, choose a situation
from your own experience that
is problematic for you. Identify
your self-talk, feelings,
behaviour, and consequences
for you of that behaviour.
2. Then have your group members
help you to identify more
functional self-talk (i.e., self-talk
that is true to facilitate goal
attainment).
Current
self-talk
Current
feelings
Current
behaviour
Consequences
Functional
self-talk
Functional
feelings
Desired
behaviour
Consequences

11. Beliefs
Self-talk
Emotions
Behaviour

13. False
assumptions
• We cannot succeed with
adaptive challenges without
recognizing that we are
putting at risk what has been
a very well functioning way of
taking care of ourselves.
• When we overcome an
immunity to change we stop
making what we have come
to see is actually a bad
bargain.

14. Visible Commitment
What I know I want to do
Example:
To empower my team members and give them more time for
high level work.
1.
Immunity to Change Model

15. What I am doing instead
The actions I am taking that seem to
be contrary to the original commitment.
• Getting into the detail of projects
• Taking over projects if they don’t seem to be moving quickly
enough
• Spending a lot of time solving problems for staff
• Writing up details plans and spreadsheets
2.
Immunity to Change Model

16. Hidden competing commitments
What other things seem to be
important that are working to
undermine my visible commitment?
• perfectionism
• avoiding risks
• solving technical problems
3.
Immunity to Change Model

17. Big assumptions
Overarching assumptions that in some way
validate the hidden assumption and negates the
original assumption
I assume that if I don’t do the work myself
then projects will necessarily fail or be
substandard, then I will be a failure as a
leader, and then...
4.
Immunity to Change Model

18. Create your own immunity x-ray
1
Commitment
(improvement goal)
2
Doing/not doing
instead
3
Hidden competing
commitments
4
Big assumptions
Worry box:
(Kegan & Laskow Lahey)

19. Multiple
approaches
to
overcome
immunity
• Construct testable big assumptions
(BAs)
• Unpack the big assumption
• If a BA is true then re-examine the
original commitment (is it realistic?)
• If the BA is false, then the competing
commitments become irrelevant
• Envisage success – build self-efficacy
• Monitor - self / team / colleague
observation

20. Shifting to
unconsciously
released
• Unconsciously immune
• Consciously immune
• Consciously released
• Unconsciously released

21. Catch your self-talk.
What are you telling
yourself? If this
helpful or unhelpful?
Change the script.

22. Unit 1—Adopting a Growth
Mindset
Unit 2—Focus on Strengths
Unit 3—Regulating Emotions
Unit 4—Reducing Stress
Unit 5—Mastering
Mindfulness
Unit 6—Improving Self-Talk