Picture two signs on a shop door. One says CLOSED. The other says BACK IN 10 MINUTES. Same locked door, completely different message. One tells you to walk away. The other tells you to wait, because something is coming. Your self-talk puts one of those signs on every hard thing you try. - "I'm not a runner." - "I'm bad with food." - "I can't switch off." That's the CLOSED sign. It sounds like a fact about you, so you stop trying. Psychologist Carol Dweck, who spent decades studying this, found that people who treat a setback as information keep improving, and people who treat it as a verdict stall. In her TED talk she describes a school that gave the grade "Not Yet" instead of a fail: - "If you get the grade 'Not Yet,' you understand that you're on a learning curve. It gives you a path into the future." Try this today. Pick one thing you tell yourself you can't do, and say it again with "yet" on the end. Then write down the one smallest next step. Not the whole plan, just the next step. "I can't run 5km yet. Next step: run for 2 minutes without stopping." Comment below: what's one thing you've been telling yourself you can't do, and what's the "yet" version?