Harnessing the Power of Repetition, for Good and Evil

Repetition facilitates learning, but be careful what you're listening to.

Psychology Today/September 4, 2025  

By Robert Evans Wilson Jr.

Reviewed by Margaret Foley

I’ve been mentoring people in public speaking for more than 30 years. The one piece of advice I have given all of them is this: “Rehearse! Rehearse! Rehearse!” I give this advice because no one taught it to me; I had to learn it the hard way.

When I first started learning public speaking in a Toastmasters club, I was locked to the lectern. I was so nervous that I grasped the sides in a white-knuckle death grip and read my speeches from notes. Fellow Toastmasters kept encouraging me to break free of the lectern and my notes, but I went an entire year and through the whole first level of the Toastmasters’ program without attempting it.

Finally, because I wanted to win a speaking contest, I memorized my speech and then rehearsed so many times I could’ve recited it in my sleep. I won the contest, but more importantly, I won the battle—I’d freed myself from both the lectern and my notes—and I learned a valuable lesson about repetition. I learned that repetition actually opened the creative circuits in my brain. With my successive repetition of a phrase or story, I would frequently think of a better way to say or tell it, or I might think of an important nugget of content to add that reinforced the story.

Learning From Repetition Is in Our DNA

The old saying “Practice Makes Perfect” is in our lexicon for a reason—it’s true! We are hardwired to learn from repetition. This may date back to our earliest days as cave-dwellers, when there was no written language and vital knowledge had to be passed down verbally. The repetition of stories around the fire enabled our ancestors to remember important facts.

Common proverbs like “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” “Actions speak louder than words,” “Don't count your chickens before they are hatched,” and “Nothing ventured, nothing gained” are good examples of wisdom that has been passed down through verbal repetition.

The Science Behind Repetition

Repetition works like this: You have a thought, and it causes several neurons to fire in your brain; if you have that thought again, those same neurons fire again; and if you keep having that thought, it will begin to form a neural pathway in your brain. You are, in essence, rewiring it. This is known as neuroplasticity, and everything you think, feel, and do reshapes your brain. Through repetition, our brain is literally molded and restructured physically, chemically, and electrically by our thoughts, feelings, and actions.

In 1949, psychologist Donald Hebb, Ph.D., in his book The Organization of Behavior, introduced what is now known as Hebbian Theory, which is summarized as "Neurons that fire together, wire together." In addition to thoughts, every time you repeat an action, you are causing neurons to fire. Each time they fire, it strengthens and makes permanent the connections between them. This creates fluency with knowledge, skills, and activities, whether it is a new language, sport, music, or craft.

Repetition is how muscle memory is formed in sports, dance, and other similar activities. Once you have fully memorized something, your brain no longer has to focus on conscious thought, but instead can function more automatically. (Did you ever wonder why you had to memorize the multiplication tables in elementary school? This is why.) As an example, think about how automatic most of your driving is now compared to when you were first learning. The biggest benefit of repetition is that it frees your mind to be more creative, free to engage in curiosity or to recognize patterns and connections in the world that you may not have noticed otherwise.

The Dark Side of Repetition

There is, however, a dark side to repetition. The fact is, the more we hear something, the more likely we are to believe it. Advertisers understand this, as do politicians, both of whom pound us daily with their preferred messages. This is the danger of fake news.

Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels is often credited with saying: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

In a research paper published May 13, 2021, in SpringerOpen (a cognitive research journal), Aumyo Hassan and Sarah J. Barber observed that “Repeated information is often perceived as more truthful than new information. This finding is known as the illusory truth effect, and it is typically thought to occur because repetition increases processing fluency. In both experiments, we found that perceived truthfulness increased as the number of repetitions increased.”

The solution to this dark side is twofold: First, control what you listen to, and second, exercise critical thinking. Don't accept everything as truth until you have verified it.

Another potentially dark side to repetition is our own thoughts.

"Life consists of what a person is thinking all day." —Ralph Waldo Emerson

What you think can influence how your body functions. Having a thought once won't leave a trace, but having it thousands of times can pave a road in your brain. Your continued, ongoing daily thoughts determine what becomes dominant in your life. Repetitive negative thoughts can lead to depression, anxiety, and other mental distress. Self-criticism can cause feelings of self-doubt, shame, guilt, fear, resentment, and anger. The trick is to exchange those negative thoughts with uplifting positive ones that empower you with resilience and confidence.

Why It’s Important to Think Positive Thoughts

There are a number of ways you can stop negative thoughts. Some people literally say, “Stop!” when they realize they are having a negative thought. My preferred word is “Cancel!” To make this really work, you need to have some pre-rehearsed positive affirmations with which to immediately replace the bad thought. Say them out loud. Add some positive imagery, such as a happy memory. And remember: When you repeat positive affirmations, you are laying down neural pathways in your brain, and the more you do it, the more they will become permanent.

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