Talk to Myself
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
I talk to myself. All the time. Folks sometimes pick on me about it. My response is always “If I talk to myself then I know I’ve had at least one intelligent conversation during the day. I’ve noticed something about folks who talk to themselves. We always know when it’s time to pay attention to someone else who talks to themselves. Not sure why that is. Perhaps a tone in the voice changes when they go from talking to themselves to talking to you.
Self talk is different then talking to yourself. Self talk is something everyone does. You are not your mind. You are who your mind talks to. That is self talk. Most folks don’t realize that they are not their minds. Their minds have been in charge for so long they’ve forgotten they have the power to control it rather then it controlling them. That was me a few years back. My self talk was demeaning, depressing and disallowing. I was my own worst enemy.
A lot has changed sense those days. I got involved with people who were willing to take a stand for me. People who made me own my shit. Who wouldn’t let me lay the blame for my life outside myself. Most of it came via books. Yes, authors can make you step up, if you apply what they’ve written to you instead of to everyone else you know. Some of it was through flesh and blood people who came into my life. Most of it was painful but all of it was worth it.
What do the conversations sound like you have with yourself? If they do not empower you, if they do not increase your belief that you are worth the best of everything, if they do not build you up and make you feel like there is nothing you can’t do; it’s time to take charge of your brain and tell it to change they way it talks to you. It’s time to stop agreeing with thoughts that don’t serve you and re-program the operating system into one that does. Things in your life will change.
Personally, I went from a job I hated to one I liked. From one I liked to one I loved. I’m in the process now of building a business that will allow me to leave the job I love and move into a life I love even more. I went from not liking myself much, to loving myself above everyone else.
One of the most freeing passages in the bible is the one where Jesus says “You must love your neighbor as you love yourself”. That passage is always taken out of context by religious people. It is not saying be a doormat. Sell you life down the river to everyone who wants a piece of it. Your life was given to you, not everyone around you. What Jesus was really saying is that until you know how to love yourself, you will never know how to truly love anyone else. When you know the value of your own life, then you can choose on purpose to put someone else first for the moment. You can’t do that unless you understand that you deserve to come first in your life. Everyone deserves to come first in their life. And that works just fine long as everyone understands the correctness of it. Where it gets us in trouble is when we want what we want at someone else’s expense. “I’m going to put myself first. And I want you to put me first as well so there is no cost to me for the choices I make”. Sadly that is how most of us play the game. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Let it be okay for you to come first in your life. Let it be okay for them to come first in their lives. Stop blaming others for being as selfish as you are when you are in pain. It is your own choices that cause you pain.