Embrace Positive Self-Talk, with Alex Elle

(air fizzing) (air clicking) (bells chiming) Headspace Studios. (relaxing music) (waves sloshing) Hi, everyone, it's Alex Elle here, your guest host for the week. Welcome to "Radio Headspace" and to Thursday. We're continuing our week on healing, and a big part of our healing journey is how we talk to ourselves. Sometimes we may not even recognize when we're tearing ourselves down, but with practice we can notice and address negative inner voices and replace them with kindness and compassion. So today let's explore what I like to call positive self-talk and how it can help us bring more peace and self-love into our lives. It's important to have positive self-talk in our lives because we can be really hard on ourselves. And so a big part of my work is getting people to find little micro moments of kindness that they can extend to their selves, especially in moments of frustration or doubt or maybe even chaos. It's a redirection to loving kindness versus continuing to be hard and mean and hurtful to ourselves. So instead of saying, "I can never do anything right," perhaps we say, "I'm trying and learning along the way." Instead of saying, "Nobody likes me," let's shift that to, "I have people in my life who love me "and who care about me, even if that person doesn't." I'm gonna give a personal example here. As a mother, I'm often teaching my 15-year-old how to shift her language. She's a talented, talented artist, but she's also a little bit of a perfectionist, so if her art doesn't come out exactly how she wants it to, she starts saying things like, "I suck. "I can't do anything right. "I'm a terrible artist." None of those things are true. So what we work on is, "I'm frustrated right now, "but I'm still good at my craft. "I think I need to take a break "because I'm feeling overwhelmed. "I love being an artist, but right now I'm at capacity." This is tough to put into practice. She's not gonna always say these out loud. It's about inner dialogue. "I don't suck at what I do. "I may have had a challenging day with my craft." It's the reframing. It's also asking, whose voice is that? Is that my negative self-talk, or is that something I learned growing up? Is that my mother's voice? Is that an ex's voice? Is that your truth or is that somebody else's doubt? And I think many of us have to get comfortable looking at our negative self-talk and challenging it. And if it's ours, okay, we need to shift how we're talking to ourselves. But if it's not ours, we need to put down the baggage that does not belong to us. It takes practice, it takes patience, and it is possible. I think a lot of us equate motivation with negative self-talk. A lot of us don't operate well when we're being yelled at, screamed at by outsiders, so why would...