I’m an idiot. You screwed it up again. I’m so stupid. Fuck, you’re a dumbass. You are a nobody. You are a mistake. Worthless.

Sound familiar? What’s the most common way you get down on yourself? Do you notice it at all or is it already so normal that it doesn’t surprise you at all?

These negative self-talk is the poison that regularly destroys you from the inside drop by drop. Take it seriously, this is an important step you need to take and change these repeated insults. You know very well that all this is not true. You are valuable. You are important. You are here for something, you have a path and a purpose in this life. Take care of yourself, respect yourself and support yourself, because your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you have in life.

The first step is awareness.

Pay attention to what you say to yourself. The next time you think “I’m hopeless,” say a firm “Stop.” You are the one with the power here, you are the one in charge of your thoughts, you are the one who decides – decide that this is the end of getting down on yourself. Realize that this is happening, don’t treat it as something normal. Take care of yourself. When you next think “you fucked it up again,” think “okay, shit happens, the world won’t explode from this, everyone makes a mistake sometimes. What can I do differently to make it work?”.

Seriously, everyone makes a mistake sometimes. Everyone sometimes doesn’t know something. Everyone sometimes will say something stupid. Everyone sometimes forgets something. Really – it happens to every person on earth. Even those top business and productivity gurus. No one is perfect and always 100%. We are not robots just humans who came to this planet to experience, make mistakes, learn from them, grow because of them. Don’t expect yourself to always be perfect because that is simply impossible.

The best way to learn is from mistakes

Life on Earth is simply a school. A difficult school. It’s not a fairy tale in which the sun is constantly shining and flowers smell beautiful. The truth is that it is on mistakes, errors, and difficulties that we learn the most. Discomfort pushes us to grow. If we were all enlightened and living in paradise on Earth, we would be sitting in the meadows as if we were high and enjoying just sitting there. And the spectrum of emotions, experiences, lessons and stories is so vast that it is worth exploring them all. But it has to be done consciously, with acceptance and understanding. Acceptance here can be understood in two ways – I don’t mean accepting that someone is hurting others, but acceptance in the sense of “OK, it happened, I recognized what happened, I accept what I feel, I have the right to feel suffering, I can’t take it back anymore – I accept that it happened, I let these emotions flow and come out of me.”

Life on Earth is a school

That’s what it’s all about – the experience. Suffering is part of life. And it may be hard to accept, but your soul agreed to it all. One of the lessons you planned for yourself for this incarnation may have been the experience of rejection, depression, betrayal, accident, disability. Souls want to learn what it means to be human, what it means to live, what it means to have a body, mind and emotions, in the full sense of the word.

Often the suffering we experience is just one part of something bigger. Perhaps one of the goals of our lives is to learn to forgive – and to do that you first need to be hurt. Perhaps our goal is to learn to take care of our bodies like a temple – and for that we need to get sick or have an accident. Perhaps our goal is to believe in ourselves – and for that we need to experience rejection or humiliation. Perhaps our goal is to discover a cure – and for that we need to lose a loved one to illness. Perhaps our goal is to learn to live a simple life without glamour, and for that we need the loss of all our possessions. These are not easy or pleasant events, but they are the ones that often push us forward.

I respect myself. I support myself. I love myself.

This is my mantra that I have repeated to myself hundreds of times. My replacement for “I’m so stupid” and “I’m a dumbass.” Whenever I was getting down on myself, I would stop for a moment, and repeat this very thing to myself: I respect myself. I support myself. I love myself. Hundreds of times. Accept yourself as you are. You really don’t have to be perfect. It’s impossible. You are perfect in your imperfection. Show yourself some support and respect and remember that this is a journey. Earth is a school and you are in constant development and constant experience. Your suffering may have some higher meaning that you don’t see yet. Accept the current part of the road through the swamp and keep going, and maybe the next part will be through a meadow with a beautiful view.

Find your own mantra or answer to all those intrusive insults. Something that lifts you up and supports you, something you feel in your heart, something positive. Ideally, at the same time you should avoid negativity or denial, that is. Don’t say “I’m not stupid at all,” but “I’m enough, I’m valuable.” And repeat it, dozens, hundreds, thousands of times. At first you will argue with yourself, screwing yourself that you are fooling yourself, but it is not true. You just have to overcome all those patterns that you have repeated for so long.

I am valuable. I am important. I am enough. I am here for something. I am 1% better every day. I experience and learn from my mistakes. I can handle myself. I’m in the process and that’s OK. My feelings matter. I love myself, even when I make mistakes. I can feel bad while still moving on. I have the right to not know something or not know how to do something. I am OK the way I am.