How we see ourselves and how we see the world have a great
deal to do with one another. In other words, our internal world and our
external one is intricately interlinked. If you have ever taken a moment to sit
quietly, it won’t be long before you notice that you are most likely not quiet
at all.

Our mind is deluged
with thoughts of every nature: What do I have to do next? Hey, what is that
smell?Oh no, I forgot to send that email and Hmm, I wonder what’s for
lunch today might all feature simultaneously in the span of a few seconds.
Imagine what goes on in there then, every second of every day since you first
knew what thoughts were.

Out in the world, we represent ourselves through our
actions, i.e. our behavior, but our internal world is represented by how we
speak to ourselves, i.e. our thoughts. We humans think over several thousand
thoughts a day, and their content both trivial and significant have an
impact on how our day(s) will go. Unfortunately, man is a creature of habit and
most of our days are spent in autopilot mode, riding the path of least
resistance and reinforcing the same thoughts, whether they are helpful or not,
over and over again. Sometimes it is difficult to even recognize when we are
stuck in a rut of our negative thoughts until it goes to an extent where it has
already affected something big in the external world, like causing friction in
your relationships or reduced productivity at work or an overall feeling of
being unhappy.

Here are a few signs
that your negative self-talk is affecting you and needs to be addressed:

• You wake up most mornings and are almost instinctively not
  looking forward to the day.
• You feel worthless, like you can’t accomplish anything or
  that it doesn’t matter even if you can.
• You spend a lot of time yearning and think about yourself in
  an alternate life situation drastically different from the one you are in.
• You find yourself stopping tasks before you have even
  started.
• You feel anger towards yourself and your (real or perceived)
  weaknesses.
• You feel resentment towards other people who seem to have
  things figured out or think that other people are probably happier than you.
• You are hard on yourself whenever you have failed at
  something and find it difficult to let it go.
• You find it hard to keep your emotions in balance and find
  yourself reacting often.
• You feel very alone in your suffering and that no one will
  be able to understand what you’re going through.
• You are afraid to try something lest you fail, and others
  judge you and you judge yourself.

The truth is that every person has insecurities and that is
perfectly all right and makes us human. It is not even unusual to go through
phases thinking and feeling negative about ourselves and our lives, but it is
dangerous when your negative thoughts have managed to overtake you as the
driver.

There is no shortcut
to feeling better, however. A lot has gone into making you feel negative and it
will take special effort to come out of these patterns of thinking. The good
news is that the way to deal with negative self-talk may take a while to get a
hang of but is actually immensely enjoyable. The answer is self-compassion.

What you need most when you think negatively is to take care
of yourself, much the same way you would take care of a friend. When your
friend is going through a hard time and is having a tough time being positive,
do you constantly degrade them and point out their weaknesses until you further
break their spirit? If you’re a good friend, probably not. Instead, you would
probably shower them with encouragement and support, special care for these
extra-hard times, you would use humor and joy, and tell them they’re not alone.
You might take them on a few outings to places they love, do things they enjoy,
and listen to their stories intently and without judgment, just love.

When you learn how to treat yourself the way you would treat
your best friend, you have learnt self-compassion and the art that counters
negative self-talk, because it is not possible for you to be extremely
judgmental of yourself when you have already accepted yourself, warts and all.
There cannot be true resentment towards others when you recognize that
everybody is struggling in their own way, and there’s just a little less pain
when you can realize that it is okay to be going through what you’re going
through. Self-compassion teaches you that it is okay to be yourself, with your
weaknesses and your suffering, without judgment and without shame.

When you can accept and love yourself, your loving thoughts
will have no option but to follow suit, which in turn will reflect in your
behavior, which will affect how the world responds to you, and lead you to
right back to your loving thoughts. Before you know it, you’ve formed a new
cycle of thinking where your mind is your friend like you are.