Who Talks To You The Most?

Who talks to you the most in your daily life?

You. The answer is you. 

No one in this world is talking to you more than yourself. 

Our inner voice is almost always operating. 

This is important to remember because HOW we talk to ourselves directly affects how we feel about ourselves.

Imagine how it would feel to have someone following you around all day throwing criticisms at you, demeaning you, judging you, pointing out all of the things that you could have done better, and all of the things that you have not done. How awful would that be? How awful would you feel?

The truth is that we all have a tendency to be our own worst critics. If you let your inner critic rule, it's very much like having someone follow you around criticizing you all day. 

Let's imagine the opposite of this for a moment.

Imagine you had someone following you around all day who was encouraging you, cheering you on, telling you what a good job you are doing, preaching self-acceptance, and talking to you with love, compassion, & kindness. 

Can you imagine how differently you would feel? 

When it comes to cultivating self-love, your self-talk is like the holy grail. 

If you can shift how your inner voice speaks to you, you can shift how you feel about yourself.

The key to this is persistence. 

It takes dedication & time to really shift how you talk to yourself, and when you do begin to make those shifts, it makes a tremendous positive impact. 

But how do you change how you talk to yourself? 

How do you turn this inner work into tangible steps? 

Here are some suggestions: 

The first key is awareness. You need to begin by paying attention to how you talk to yourself in order to change it. 

• Set an intention each morning to pay attention to your self-talk as you move through your day.
• Set an alarm on your phone to go off a few times a day as you are developing this practice. When your alarm goes off, take a moment to check in with your inner dialog in that moment, or in the moments before the alarm.
• Have an accountability partner. Maybe you bring up the topic for a few moments each night over dinner or text a friend daily about this as you are developing the habit. Supporting each other can help.

When you find yourself aware of being self-critical, take a moment to 'flip the script' you are telling yourself to something more self-loving. 

• How would you speak to someone you love to reassure them in this circumstance? Shift to speaking to yourself with that same compassion. Literally, change the script in your mind in that moment to something new.
• Look at the circumstance  - What is a more kind perspective you can take?

Develop a habit of saying kind things to yourself. 

• When you feel proud of something, really take a moment to soak that in.
• Celebrate the things that you feel good about. Cheer yourself on.
• Create a physical or mental list of things that you love & appreciate about yourself. 

Journal - write these things down to help all of it sink in. A daily practice of journaling for a period of time can be very supportive of developing the habit of more loving self-talk. Below are some ideas. Try one of these for 30 days & see how much shifts for you!

• Each morning write a short love letter to yourself. Think of it like an encouraging note you would send in a child's lunch box. Remind yourself of the good that you do. Remind yourself how lovable you are & why. Remind yourself to be kind & compassionate with yourself throughout the day.
• At the end of each day, write down 3 things that you feel really good about from your day. This can be anything - from an act of self-care, pride in the work that you did, how you treated others, how well you dealt with circumstances in the day - anything you can think of.
• Each day write down 3 things that you love about yourself.
• At the end of each day, write down a couple of examples from your day where you 'flipped the script' in your mind to be more self-loving.

Give the people in your life permission to give you a gentle reminder if you are speaking harshly of yourself out loud. This is something that we can all be supportive of each other around. 

• When you say something like "god, I can't believe I did that. I feel like a dumb-ass. I'm so embarrassed.". If your friend or partner gives you a gentle nudge in that moment, it's a good opportunity to talk it out & change what you said to something more self-loving.
• If you hear someone speak harshly about themselves, point it out. Encourage them to be more kind to themself.
• Remember that harmful self-talk is something that absolutely everyone deals with internally. Yes, everyone. I believe that if we normalize talking about this & supporting each other we can all make more progress towards self-loving talk being more common. 

If you want to feel more self-love,  you need to show yourself more self-love. Shifting how you speak to yourself is the most impactful way I know of to feel more self-loving. 

Remember that we can change habits & build new habits all the time. All it takes is persistence. It's never a linear journey - there are always twists & turns, ebbs & flows, dips, and hills on the road. 

What I do know is that when we persist on something it changes. I'm proof of this, and so are many of my clients. I listen to them make these shifts all of the time, and it always comes with persistence. 

I can say with all honesty that I have shifted how I speak to myself SO much over the years, and the more I do, the better I feel, the more resilient I am, the more my life changes for the better, and the more loving I am to the people around me, too.

I am not immune - I'm still awful to myself sometimes, but more often than not these days, I'm able to change my inner dialog to be more self-loving pretty quickly.

Next week is Valentine's day. Call it a Hallmark holiday if you want, but I like the idea of a holiday focused on love. 

I'm considering February self-love month & will be writing more about self-love practices over the next couple of weeks.

 I would love to hear from you if you have a specific area of self-love that you feel like you struggle with. Is there something that you would like to hear about in the realm of self-love? Let me know! 

Until next week, be kind you yourself ❤️

Shelly