Your biggest enemy may be dwelling between your ears!

Self talk! Inner dialogue! Internal speech! Voice in your head! Inner monologue! 

Whatever you choose to call it, we all have this voice going on inside our head every single second of our lives but despite this constant inner dialogue many of us are not really aware of it consciously or do we actually take the time to even listen properly to how we self talk! 

 We just accept what we are saying to ourselves and just go with it without ever considering to question it or to assess whether it is doing us more harm than good!

Quite often than not we are our own worst enemies!

 We have the self awareness on occasions to recognize that if we spend too much time with negative people then it has a negative effect on us and our mood and so we decide to distance ourselves from them but we rarely listen to what we are saying to ourselves! 

Sadly most of us are our biggest critics and the ones who are the most unkind to us.

You make a mistake for instance,  so you feel frustrated and disappointed with yourself which you acknowledge via your self talk that is telling you that you have screwed up, however most of us go a lot further than just to acknowledge that we made a mistake and we beat ourselves up and berate ourselves for it and will even go so far as telling ourselves that we are stupid for doing so and punish ourselves for it.

THIS WILL ACHIEVE NOTHING BUT TO MAKE YOU FEEL WORSE THAN YOU ALREADY DO!

Surely you are going to be more productive in fixing the mistake if you are kind to yourself and you accept that you made a mistake, forgive yourself because you are only human and acknowledge  that one mistake doesn't define you as a person!

Telling yourself that you are bad, worthless, have to be punished and generally making yourself feel terrible about yourself is going to make it so much harder for you to find the motivation to rectify the problem and you will probably think that it's a whole lot worse than it really is and perhaps not fixable so best not to even try!

It is also more likely to prevent you from trying again in the future for fear of messing up and how bad it will make you feel! 

Think about a child who has done something wrong; do you really believe that the best way they can learn from their innocent mistakes is by being punished and made to feel ashamed about it and like they  are bad because of it or is it not more conducive for them to learn why it was wrong and how to make it right by being nurtured and encouraged to do the right thing and therefore feel like they are loved because of their faults and all, and valued enough to be given the chance and incentive to make it right and learn from it in a positive way!

Obviously, before you can manage your internal dialogue, you have to be aware of it! 

The first step is to make a conscious effort to listen to how you talk to yourself.

This will take time and effort but you can test your inner dialogue by thinking about a time when you have made a mistake and when you recall it, listen to what you are saying about yourself in relation to it.

Another way is to make a positive statement about yourself and then listen for any negative thoughts about yourself that your self talk is objecting to about your statement. 

For example you may make the statement that you are a beautiful person which of course you are, but you may start to doubt this as soon as your inner voice starts telling you things such as you might look beautiful today because you are wearing loads of makeup but you looked rough this morning or if you are such a beautiful person how come so and so hates you..... You may even go a step further and then criticise yourself for thinking so much of yourself and then start to think that you are not a good person for doing so! 

Once you are aware that your self talk is negative then you have to challenge it! 

Ask yourself if there is any real evidence and whether what you are saying is based upon the opinion of another who is probably wrong.

Try to understand where you first formed the negative opinion and whether the circumstances were warranted at the time or are they still relevant. 

For example if this negative effect came from a past incident in childhood then why do you hold onto it as you are now an adult and you have grown and changed!

Over time you will have reinforced the negative things that you are telling yourself and now it has become habit and it will take you time to change the habit in favour of a far more useful and positive one.

You have to stop your internal dialogue from going down the road into negativity as soon as you recognise it happening.

The best way of doing this is to interrupt this pattern by having to hand a list of positive affirmations that you can repeat until they are fixed firmly in your mind.

The more you do this the more you will find that your inner talk is being kinder to you and you are feeling better and more positive because of it.

Be kind to yourself!