There’s an old stigma surrounding people who talk to themselves but, as it turns out, if you like to talk to yourself it doesn’t mean you’re crazy. Nowhere close, actually. In fact, studies are finding that it may mean just the opposite.

A dual study published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology indicates that talking to yourself may actually be a sign of genius. Or, at least it will help you get there.

The 2012 study was spearheaded by Gary Lupyan and Daniel Swingley and its aim was to see if verbal cues had a direct effect on our cognitive perception of an object.

In other words, if a person were to search for something, the minds behind the study wanted to see if said person would be able to locate the object in question more efficiently while talking to themselves. Via several experiments involving both word association with objects and a lack thereof, it became apparent that talking to ourselves has a huge impact on how we perceive the world around us and how we choose to operate in it.

The study, along with several others like it, have consistently found that talking to yourself can be beneficial to your brain and, therefore, your life.

Here are 4 ways that talking to yourself helps make you smarter.

1. It increases brain efficiency

Talking to yourself, also known as “self-directed speech” can improve your brain’s productivity by conceptualizing your body’s actions and storing them in the memory bank for future use. According to the study, one experiment had subjects look at 20 photos of different objects while they searched for a single item. Half the subjects were instructed to repeat the name of the item they were searching for out loud while the other half said nothing.

What the experiment showed was that not only did subjects that repeated the word find the object more quickly, but they also experienced a boost in their memorization skills.

2. Children who talk to themselves learn even faster.

When we’re kids our curious nature leads us to learn about the world around us all of the time. It turns out that if kids are talking to themselves while they do it, though, they will learn about it even faster.

“Research has shown that self-directed speech can help guide children’s behavior, with kids often taking themselves step-by-step through tasks such as tying their shoelaces, as if reminding themselves to focus on the job at hand,” explains Live Science contributer, Charles Choi, of a separate study.

3. It can help de-clutter your brain

According to psychologist and success coach, Dr. Linda Sapadin, when one chooses to speak to themselves in a motivational manner, it can help clear your mind of unnecessary thought patterns and help you crush your goals faster.

“Saying it out loud focuses your attention, reinforces the message, controls your runaway emotions and screens out distractions. Top athletes do this all the time by telling themselves to, ‘Keep your head down. Keep your eye on the ball. Breathe,’” she writes in her essay, Talking to Yourself – A Sign of Sanity.

4. It will help you crush your life goals

Repeating your goals to yourself out loud will help you to realize them. It does this by solidifying your goals and separating them from the rest of your thoughts. If you repeat them long enough, it will significantly improve your focus on them and naturally force all other non-goal oriented thoughts to fall away.

So, don’t believe the rumors friends. If you like to talk to yourself it is a perfectly normal sign that you are in a healthy, productive state of mind. The next time you’re feeling like you need a memory boost, or even if you’re just looking for your keys, try having a good old fashioned chat with yourself and be amazed at how quickly things start coming together for you.

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Source: Psychology Press/Live Science/Trans4Mind