The Simple Mental Habit Every High-Performer Shares

There’s a question I ask every guest on my podcast, Inspired with Alexa von Tobel. It comes near the end of every conversation, after we’ve gone deep on business models, hard pivots, and the relentless grind of building something from nothing. The question is simple: What’s a mantra that runs through your head?

I started asking it on a hunch. After years as a founder, dropping out of Harvard Business School to launch LearnVest during the height of the financial crisis, scaling it to acquisition, and then building Inspired Capital, I had come to believe that mindset wasn’t a soft variable. It was a hard one. The words we repeat to ourselves shape the decisions we make, the risks we take, and how quickly we get back up when things go sideways.

What I didn’t expect was how consistent the pattern would be. Seven seasons and more than 300 conversations with some of the most ambitious founders and leaders in the world later, nearly every single person has one. A phrase. A word. A sentence they return to, especially when it’s hard. And the science tells us why that matters more than we think.

The neuroscience of positive self-talk

Researchers have studied positive self-talk for decades, and the findings are striking. According to psychologist Ethan Krosspeople who engage in intentional self-talk, particularly using second or third person (“You can do this” rather than “I can do this”), demonstrate measurably better emotional regulation and higher persistence under stress. Referring to yourself by name or in the third person creates psychological distance, allowing you to process difficulty the way you would coach a close friend through it. This isn’t motivation-poster territory. It’s behavioral science with real implications for how leaders operate.

What founders have figured out intuitively, researchers have been proving empirically: the mind responds to repetition. When you return to the same phrase under pressure, you’re essentially training a neural shortcut, a mental circuit that fires automatically when you need it most.

What exceptional founders say to themselves

Mine is get up, dress up, show up. Get up early to own the morning. Get dressed because how you present yourself signals something to your own brain before it signals anything to the world. And show up with 150% energy, with intention, with a positive attitude — every single day, regardless of what happened yesterday. It’s a three-beat rhythm I return to constantly. And when that’s not enough, I have a second one: onwards and upwards. Because sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is simply keep going.

May Habib, founder and CEO of Writer, has a single word: forward. “On the tough days,” she told me, “my brain beats to that drum. Forward, forward, forward.” There’s something almost physical about the way she described it, a drumbeat rather than a thought. Repetition, especially under stress, converts conscious mantras into something closer to instinct. For founders navigating the relentless uncertainty of building a company, that kind of automatic anchor is invaluable.