A Better Way to Talk to Yourself

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about your inner voice. So take a moment to think about the tone of your inner voice. How do you talk to yourself? Is it really loving and kind? Or is it a bit critical and harsh? Chances are, if you're a human being, it's probably closer to the latter than the former. And interestingly, if other people will talk to us the way we talk to ourselves, we'd probably cut them out of our life.

And yet we tend to get away with it ourselves. And actually there are certainly times when we let other people talk to us in a negative way, because we tolerate that kind of talk from ourselves. But in general, our inner critic tends to be much harsher than anything we would allow from other people or expect from other people. And so what would it be like to instead talk to yourself in the same way you would talk to a good friend, or expect a good friend to talk to you? This is a really simple exercise you can apply to your life to increase self-compassion and really just to feel better. You don't necessarily need to be going through anything, particularly difficult.

Just practice talking to yourself throughout the day like you would talk to a good friend. Rooting yourself on, reminding yourself that you got this, telling yourself that it will be okay if you're going through something difficult. You can even imagine texting yourself as if you were texting a friend and then how would a friend text you back. And try and talk to yourself in that way. So in addition to just saying these things, see if you can also feel the kindness and goodness in the tone and sentiment as if you were saying from the same place of heart, you would say them to a friend.

So you don't want to just say like, Oh yeah, you're doing great. But really try to feel that, really try to feel those words. It's a simple technique, but it can often be quite powerful. So try it out throughout your day and maybe for the rest of your life. Thanks for your practice.

Let's settle in for today's meditation.