We all have conversations with ourselves, some of them take place inside our heads. We tell ourselves something we believe, and most of those beliefs are based on what we were told as a child before we formed our own beliefs (if we ever formed them!). The question is, what are you telling yourself at this time in your life?

Are you staying on the positive side or the negative side? Are you asking yourself “why me?” when you’re in the dumps or something unexpectedly unpleasant happens to you? It’s easy to tell yourself something negative to justify anything that happens to yo

u that doesn’t work out the way you want it to. You can lay blame on either yourself, which just makes it worse, or on someone else in order to make yourself feel better. But does either way help?

If negative self-talk has been a regular thing for you, it’s going to take a while to remove that habit that no longer serves you. The first thing you may ask yourself is “how?” It’s not going to happen overnight and will take some introspection.

The first thing you can do is just breathe…then,

1. Acknowledge what you’ve told yourself.
2. Ask yourself where it’s coming from. Who has said that to you in the past, and why?
3. Make a conscious decision to stop it – you can write down when it happens so you can see how often and when you do it. This can help you understand the cause(s) and is a visual cue for reference.
4. Turn it around to mean something more positive. For example, if you’re self-talk is “You messed up again,” you can say, “What’s the lesson I can take from this?” This allows for self-compassion to start to emerge, because no one’s perfect.
5. Give yourself a hug – this isn’t an easy journey and we need to support ourselves as well as get support from others.
6. Rinse and repeat.