Better Talk Nice: It’s Time to Be Intentional with Your Self Talk

Recently, I began to realize just how much my self talk was impacting my mental and emotional health. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t positively.

I was full of shame and self-doubt. I felt so unworthy of the love I longed for, and I would overthink everything, clinging to all the little moments and interactions that validated the way I felt about myself. My self talk became so venomous that I felt damaged, small, helpless.

You see, when you convince yourself that you aren’t deserving or loved or capable, you begin to truly embody that as you navigate the world. Your criticisms become self-fulfilling prophecies: you don’t get the opportunity, because you’ve talked yourself out of pursuing it to begin with. You don’t build deeper connections, because you’re restrained by the voice in your head telling you that you’re being secretly judged by the people you love. You don’t speak up for yourself, because you believe that your opinions don’t matter. It’s full blown self-sabotage, sis.

Becoming more intentional about how I speak to myself has been both challenging and cathartic. I’ve become more gentle with myself, giving myself the grace that I so freely give those around me. I feel lighter, more creative. It’s a process that I’m chipping away at every day, but I feel so much better mentally and emotionally when I’m kind to myself. I’m actively working on my relationship with myself — arguably the most important one I’ll ever have, after God — and all along, it was the one I was neglecting the most.

Here are a few techniques I’ve been using to keep myself accountable. Let’s get to work.

Recognize when you’re being hard on yourself.

There’s a difference between holding yourself accountable and downright being mean to yourself. In order to talk to yourself with intention, you must be able to discern the two.

A rule of thumb I keep in my back pocket is that if I wouldn’t say it to a friend I value deeply, I shouldn’t be saying it to myself.

Your thoughts are your reality… or are they?

The law of attraction states that like vibrations attract like vibrations. We are returned with the energy we exude… in our thoughts, in our emotions, in our actions. Thus, our negative self talk eventually becomes manifest in real life, even if it wasn’t this way before.

But sometimes, you’re truly just overthinking it, sis. Our thoughts about ourselves and the world aren’t without bias. Unfortunately, when you’re used to talking down to yourself, that bias is usually not in your favor. I’ve had to really dig deep to unpack why I felt a certain way about myself in particular instances, even when objective reality didn’t reflect that. Sometimes, when you find yourself reinforcing a certain narrative in your self talk, you have to be firm with yourself and say, “That isn’t true, and you have no reason to believe that it is.”

Shift your perspective.

Recently, I called my mom to vent about how disappointed I was with myself about a decision I’d made months before. I beat myself up about it, sickened by how my actions didn’t reflect the kind of standards to which I wanted to hold myself.

She helped me see it from another perspective, one that made a lot more sense in the long run. “Everything happens for a reason,” she told me. “If you would’ve done that then, who knows what obstacles you’d be facing now. We do our best with what we have at the time.”

And, as always, she was right.

When you catch yourself in a moment of negative self talk, ask yourself if, in the grand scheme of things, the thing you’re berating yourself about is even worth the mental shit show. Sometimes, all it takes is a change of perspective to realize that you are doing your best, and that is more than enough.

The beauty is in the balance.

I get it. Reconditioning the way you talk to yourself isn’t an overnight project. Sometimes, those thoughts are gone do what they wanna do and it’s gone be what it is. In these moments, if I can’t stop a negative thought, I’ll try to balance it with a positive one.

The next time you tell yourself that you aren’t good at something, remind yourself that it’s simply a challenge. When your inner voice fixes itself to call you a failure, remember all the times that you succeeded. If you criticize one part of your body, compliment another. When you feel as though you aren’t worthy of love, think of all the people who would wholeheartedly disagree.

The bottom line:

Be discerning about how you speak to and about yourself — your words carry energy. When we’ve been abusing ourselves for so long, it becomes natural and familiar, and we accept these thoughts for what they are because it’s all we’ve ever known. Hindsight is 20/20, and looking back, I’ve realized how insidious my negative self talk was. How much damage it’s done over the years. How small I’ve made myself feel.

You are the one and only person you get to do life with, from start to finish. Be kind to yourself. You deserve it.