If your career has gone off the rails over the past few years, getting it back on track will take some doing. You have to know how to look for work. You need tangible goals, and a support group. And according to Dr. Zeeva Millman, you also have to recognize your inner self talk.

"People think they need to know how to write a resume, how to interview and do networking to get a job," Millman says. "But preceding all that, is knowing what you're saying to yourself."

Millman is a Toronto consultant and teacher with a background in consumer packaged goods and a Ph.D. in organizational behavior and human resource management. A couple of years ago, Millman was a doctoral student at the University of Toronto and conducted a study of unemployed managers and executives to help them understand their inner self-talk and how it affected their work searches.

Most of us natter away to ourselves all the time. Why did I do it that way? What else could I have done? Maybe I should have...? Why didn't I?.... Why didn't they...? And so on.

If you've been unemployed for a long time this inner chatter is often highly negative. "People learn to give up," says professor, Gary Latham, who was Millman's advisor at U of T. "They get feedback from the media that there are no jobs, and conclude, rationally, ` I might as well give up, there's nothing there'. They become discouraged. They lose their motivation."

Millman did the study because she believes it's possible to take control of your inner world and create your own motivation. Her research proves the point.

The advice our grandmothers gave us is true, it seems. We are masters of our own destiny, at least to a large degree. Like the little train that kept repeating, I think I can. I think I can, we can talk ourselves up, and succeed. Or, we can talk ourselves down, and fail.

A woman we'll call Della, a lawyer who'd been out of work for over a year, was part of Millman's study. She was one of twenty- eight people, all about 50 years of age. They all had been out of work for a year, or more.

Eight people were left to their own devices, as a control group, advised to continue searching as they had been, Millman says.

The remaining 20, were given 14 hours of group counseling.

First, they were asked to become hyper- aware of how they talked to themselves as they searched for employment. "Getting people to acknowledge their self talk, to become aware of it, is not an easy process," Millman acknowledges. The diaries they kept made it easier. "We have thoughts that come in and out of our minds. Without writing them down, we can't catch them".

Entries in these diaries illustrate some of the inner thoughts of people who've been unemployed for a long time: Why bother? Nobody's going to want me. Nobody's going to want me at my age. Nobody's going to pay me the salary I was earning.

Once the members of the group had become aware of their inner chatter, Millman counseled them to rewrite each negative thought and make it a positive one. And thereafter, to push away negative thoughts when they popped into mind, and replace them with positive thoughts.

Why bother? became: Why not bother? No one will want me at 53, became: Of course someone will want me, just look at the wealth of experience I have to offer. And, so on.

As they worked to turn their inner dialogue into positive (and objective) affirmations, these managers were counseled to "feel sorry for the people who turned them down. And above all, to persist," says Latham.

The process was dynamic, according to Della. It helped her "believe in herself". It also made her realize "that when you doubt yourself, it comes across."

For some of the people in the group Millman counseled, it meant even more. Within nine months, half of them had landed jobs, good jobs, Latham says. Another had gone back to school; another had retired. In the control group of 8, only one had found work.

Although a small sample, findings like these are "statistically significant", he adds.

"What's truly amazing," Latham says, "is that it's so simple. It doesn't require rocket science. It just requires you to be sensitive to how you talk to yourself. You have to be your own cheerleader,"

In other words, cliché or not, the old adage is true. Self doubt is the enemy. But you can banish it. You can learn to recognize your fears, bring them into your conscious mind and then talk yourself out of them.