If I’m kinder to myself, will I lose my edge?
Insights on improving your internal dialogue from my experiences as Chief Joy Officer at Makers
Many Makers students can be classified as ‘over-achievers’. They’re used to vigorously pushing themselves in pursuit of their goals.
Often they are too hard on themselves, which is accompanied by negative self-talk which is meant as ‘motivation’. I see the toll it takes on them and am glad when they seek to relieve themselves of this pattern.
When I advise them to be kinder to themselves, a natural fear crops up in them that they’ll become lazy, or complacent.
“If I’m kinder to myself, will I lose my edge?” they wonder.
Understandably, it can feel counterintuitive to stop pushing themselves with tough self-talk, but positive self-talk actually improves performance.
What is self-talk? Your self-talk combines your conscious thoughts with your unconscious beliefs and biases.
I see when students practice kinder self-talk, they become more confident, more adaptable to the course, and perform better.
But why would you practice a positive relationship with yourself? Negative patterns are reinforced when, on some level, we don’t feel worth the effort or deserving of the gains.
This isn’t about fixing something that’s broken or hacking yourself so that you can tick off a list of goals. This is about realising and committing to the knowing that you deserve to feel good and to thrive! A bonus is that others benefit from your thriving too.
It doesn’t matter who you are. Worthiness is inherent. That’s it.
This is part of the effort: to practice going against the false belief that you have to earn your worthiness.
That you have to be a good coder, a good daughter, a good partner, whatever; then you’ve added enough to your ‘worthiness bank’ to then start being nicer to yourself. It doesn’t work that way.
Your unique consciousness, perspective and path in this existence cannot be replicated. You’re valuable just because you exist, whether you think so or not.
You are born worthy of love and belonging, yet that’s ultimately what everybody’s hustling for. Committing to knowing your un-earnable worth, whether you feel it or not, allows new, positive mental habits to form and gain momentum.
Who are you living with? There’s a voice in your head — how does that voice make you feel? Strong and reassured? Or doubtful and discouraged?
“Success without fulfilment is not success.” — Tony Robbins
It’s essential that your self-talk - also referred to as your internal dialogue - is healthy if you want to create a full and successful life.
We may feel that the voice in our mind is an entity we can’t control. It seems to govern itself. That’s just because it’s a mental habit that we’ve probably practiced for years, so we’re on autopilot.
Yet this is something very changeable. With a bit of practice we can form new mental habits that serve us better.
When I coach people on how to improve their ongoing negative self-talk one of their first reactions is: “it’s going to be hard”. My reply then is: “it’s harder not to”.
You can spend your life feeling discontent and perhaps stuck with unhelpful thinking styles, or you can spend your life deliberately inclining towards a positive relationship with yourself.
When we frame it in terms of a relationship, we can start to see it as a life-long commitment. It’s organic, it has ups and downs but we want it to flourish and grow so we pour courage and love into it — and trust and fun start to build.
How does your self-talk make you feel? Your emotions are your indicator - if it feels bad, try to say (think) it in a way that feels better.
I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t look at ourselves honestly so that we can improve where we fall short. It’s about the attitude and tone we take with ourselves. Sometimes we speak worse to ourselves than those we don’t even like.
Often people refer to it as ‘the nasty voice in your head’. I don’t think it’s a nasty voice. I think that the voice is well-meaning and wants your survival, but is fear-driven and unskilled in creating true safety and fulfilment for you.
It doesn’t always have to sound like a mean gremlin. It can sound like ‘wisdom’ that was passed down to you or like ‘being realistic’. It can be so subtle and sneaky you don’t even realise it’s running the show.
“You become what you think about all day long.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
You live with yourself so it’s easy to miss unhelpful self-talk since we’re thinking thousands of thoughts everyday. But with increased awareness you can catch those thoughts and practice thinking more helpful ones.
There are various ways you can do this:
Coaching and therapy. Externalising your thoughts and feelings with a professional who you feel well-matched with, can certainly help. One gains insights and tools to heal root causes of negative patterns and behaviours. It’s important to remember however that, applying what you learn, is what’s needed to create positive change.
Journaling. Journaling helps you to clarify your thoughts and feelings while releasing stress. It’s also a great problem solving tool. Check the tone that you write with, it’s a good indicator of the tone and attitude of voice that you use with yourself. By externalising your thoughts and feelings on paper, you can reflect upon them and choose better feeling thoughts as you go. Leaning towards being understanding and kind to yourself helps improve self-talk.
Practice Mindfulness. Mindfulness increases your awareness and essentially ‘turns up the volume’ of your self-talk. Being non-judgemental is a key aspect of mindfulness, which helps you identify less with your self-talk and become more of an objective observer of your mind. From here, you can more clearly see which thoughts serve you and which don’t, and decide to practice preferred thoughts.
Call yourself on your patterns. Blame, shame, harsh judgement, and regret are some of the toxic threads that weave our unhelpful thought patterns together. These patterns can be so ingrained that we unknowingly use them in our personal development journeys as well. (For example, we want better for ourselves so try to improve ourselves and when we get off track, we beat ourselves up. Then we beat ourselves up for how we beat ourselves up!)
The aim is to catch your unhelpful self-talk (the earlier the better) and short circuit the pattern by shifting from self-criticism to self-compassion.
A kinder voice. Practice speaking to yourself in a gentler way, the Buddhists refer to this as “The Grandmother Mind”. Try speaking to yourself as a loving grandmother does to her grandchild. A parent is more urgent and strict, worried about ensuring that the child is prepared for life. A grandparent meanwhile, is more relaxed and wise — they know it all works out and so is gentler and more lenient with her grandchild.
Using a kinder, understanding tone with yourself creates a feeling of safety and space, which allows you to explore yourself and reach your potential.
After all, you’re living with yourself all day, everyday. You’re the closest person to you. The way you speak to yourself — your relationship with yourself — defines everything else in your life.
Even though study after study shows the benefits of positive self-talk, some are still skeptical. After all, personal experience is the best teacher so I suggest they test it for themselves for a period of time and see for themselves the difference it makes. It’s test driven personal development isn’t it?
As you improve your self-talk, note your progression and commend yourself for taking your true path of loving yourself to success. Because truly, being kind and loving to yourself is success.
