Your mind is the battleground. Touch somebody and tell them the enemy is after your mind. Out to worry you to death, out to stress you to death, out to break you down, out to make you quit, out to make you think that you can’t get up, out to make you give up on your dream. The warfare is in your mind, it’s not in your checkbook, it’s not in your savings account, it’s not on your job – the fight that you got to fight is in your mind, and if you whip it in your head, you can whip it your checkbook, you can whip it on your job, you can whip it out of your children. But you gotta drive it outta your head. – TD. Jakes.

Would you enjoy staying with someone you don’t love for the rest of your life? Going to bed together, eating all of your meal together and even going to the bathroom together! That person you cannot escape from is yourself. Since you were given the power to decide whether to love you or to hate you, why not decide to go the extra mile in order to create a more loving self to support you throughout your life. It is time to master your inner voice!

Reconnect with yourself

For too many years you’ve have been belittling yourself, criticizing yourself, putting yourself down. Time has come for you to fall in love with yourself. Trust me, if you need someone to criticize you, make fun of you or ridicule you will find plenty out there. Why not let them do their job and do yours instead: love yourself!

Did you know that when you were a baby you likely kissed yourself in the mirror? For sure you admired yourself in the mirror. When is the last time you look at the mirror and say to yourself “I love you”? Isn’t it about time to reconnect with your loving self?

In this article I would like to help you turn the little voice inside you into:

• Your personal coach
• Your biggest fan
• Your best friend
• Your lover

Imagine how great it would feel to have a coach, a best friend, a love and a fan all supporting you at the same time!

Become your personal coach:

Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers. – Tony Robbins

Great questions are a powerful tool use by coaches to help their clients see new perspectives and empower them. Why not start asking yourself empowering questions instead of stupid questions like: “Why does it always happen to me?” or “Why can’t I get anything right?”

Rather than pressuring yourself with “shoulds” and “musts” why not start planting seeds of potentiality in your subconscious mind and gently encouraging yourself by using sentences like:

• What if I could do this or that
• Imagine if I could…
• Just assume I…
• How great would it be if…

By using these kinds of questions you reach out to our imagination and put your subconscious mind at work. You start envisioning possibilities and release the pressure created by too many “shoulds”, “musts” or “have-tos” in your life. Try asking yourself these questions and see how you feel.

ex: What if I could get that job? Imagine if I could get that job? Just assume I get that job? How great would it be if I got that job?

Doesn’t it seem more empowering and less stressful than saying:

“I need to get that job. If I don’t get that job I don’t know what I’m going to do”. Or “I’m not smart enough to get that job”.

Keep asking yourself empowering questions and planting suggestions in your mind again and again and again until it reaches your subconscious mind. It might take time so be patient. Your brain is plastic and thoughts are shaping it on a physiological level. What it means is that each time you think about something you actual strengthen neural pathways that are associated with that thought and rewiring your brain. Each time you feel an urge to think about something negative remember that the more you think about something, the easier it is for your brain to access to that thought.

One of our greatest mistakes is to believe that we must be harsh on ourselves in order to perform at our best. Self-discipline can certainly help us accomplish more in our life, through effective planning and controlled focus for instance. However, even though it can lead you to be successful in the eyes of society, self-discipline without self-love and self-compassion won’t bring you real fulfillment. Self-love is the foundation on which we should base our life.

Are you too harsh on yourself?

Don’t think that because you are talking to yourself with great respect, you will lose the drive or the motivation to follow your passion. Don’t believe that if you are not harsh on you, you will slack off. Gently, encourage you to move forward and take action.

Become your biggest fan

If you want to achieve your greatest self, be your own biggest fan. – Steve Maraboli

You also want to be your biggest fan, cheer yourself up, and acknowledge your accomplishments, no matter how small they may be.

As your biggest fan you want to show how much you are proud of yourself and express unconditional support to yourself.

• I’m proud of you Thibaut because X, Y, Z (add the reasons why you are proud of you)
• I will always support you no matter what

Try to imagine all the positive things that a unconditional fan of you could come up with. Imagine how he would talk to his/her friends about you.

How many great things about you have you yet to discover?

Become your best friend

You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with. – Wayne Dyer

Remember for a moment how you talk to your best friend. Now, do you talk to yourself the same way you talk to your best friend? Would you dare to say to your best friends that he/she is not good enough, stupid or a loser? So why are you saying it to yourself?

If you think about it, when we are sick, the only thing that matters for us is to get better. Suddenly, other people sufferings don’t seem very important. Doesn’t it show how much we actually care for ourselves? However, at the same time, we are constantly belittling ourselves for insignificant things.

If you look closely at your emotional state in the last few months or years, you will likely realize that your mood has a lot to do with the thoughts you were having at the time. You might even notice that sometimes you feel down without really knowing why. What if you could talk to yourself as you talk to your best friend? What if you could support yourself in hard time like you would support your best friend and prevent negative thoughts from making things worse? Impossible you say. Why not? What are you scared of? Why are you putting yourself down?

You can use sentences that show support like:

• It’s okay
• Don’t worry about…
• I will always trust/support you no matter what

Become your lover

To love yourself right now, just as you are, is to give yourself heaven. Don’t wait until you die. If you wait, you die now. If you love, you live now. – Alan Cohen

We are living in societies where people are way too much obsessed about what people think of them. We are trying so hard to be loved and appreciated. However, ultimately, there is only one person you should make sure you receive love from and it is yourself! You must love yourself first. Other people love will never compensate for a lack of self-love. I believe the need to be loved by others is inversely proportional to how much we love ourselves. The more we love ourselves, the less we need other people’s approval.

Unfortunately, too often, we try to love ourselves by having other people loved us, which of course fails to satisfy us. Or, we look for ourselves in fame, wealth or other accomplishments.

You can simply say to yourself:

• I love myself
• I love you “your name” (A good way to do it is to say it to yourself while standing in front of a mirror)

Does it feel awkward? If so, why? What does it say about you?

Repeat “I love myself” as often as you can throughout your day. Whenever you start criticizing yourself, take a deep breath and repeat I love myself again and again. In his book Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It, Kamal Ravikant explains how he got out of a severe depression and transformed his life by repeating to himself “I love myself” for hours every day. Why not giving it a try?

Usually, we have some kind of criteria we use to judge ourselves. People who are harsh on themselves set unrealistic expectations that are very difficult to match. Then, when they fail to live up to their high expectations their inner voice becomes very harsh on them. To increase your self-love and your level of fulfillment, you can simply lower your expectations and move towards more self-acceptance.

Remember that you can choose what makes you happy. Most people don’t spend time appreciating things they already have; instead they set very high expectations and try to have more in order to be happy. As a result, they never seem to be happy or satisfied with their present self. Conversely, some people who have very little, but who spend their time counting their blessings are generally happier.

What do you really need everyday to feel happy? Is what you need easy to get? Is it something you have total control over? If not you might want to change it.

Declare unconditional love to yourself

Wouldn’t it be great if you could love yourself regardless of all your weaknesses, setbacks and mistakes? Here is what I recommend you to do:

Take a piece of paper, write “self-love” in the middle and circle it. Then, write all the things that are preventing you from loving yourself with arrows pointing towards self-love.

In your daily routine, repeat to yourself: “I will always love you XX, no matter if you procrastinate, if you feel that you are not good enough, if you don’t succeed at… (Add all the things you wrote down).

You might also want to add the worse case situations like “if you never get married, if you get sick, if you have no money…”

The purpose of this exercise is to progressively get out of your head the idea that you need external approval or big success in order to love yourself and to be happy. You can be happy right now! You want to start conditioning your mind for more self-acceptance by separating things that trigger negative self-talks from your actual self-worth.

By priming your brain for self-acceptance of things that trigger self-hatred or self-criticism, you will be able to love yourself more and more each day and better take control of your inner voice.

Finally, remember what Wayne Dyer says: “I am a human being, not a human doing. Don’t equate your self-worth with how well you do things in life. You aren’t what you do. If you are what you do, then when you don’t…you aren’t.”

Imagine how much your life would improve if you had a personal coach, a best friend, a lover and a huge fan of you supporting you unconditionally 24/7 in your life.

Mastering your inner voice is probably one of the best skills you can ever acquire in your life. It might seem rather easy to do when everything is going alright but when things are getting tough it can become suddenly very hard. Don’t be too harsh on yourself 😉

I challenge you to start nurturing the inner coach, the best friend, the lover and the fan within you. From today, for a whole week, empower you, support you, love you and cheer you up. Refuse to blame you and to be harsh on you even when you feel you have good reasons for that. Are you really up to the challenge?

Leave me a comment below and tell me what changed in your life after a week?

It is time for you to rediscover the love you had for yourself when you were a baby. You just forgot it but it is somewhere within you.

To summarize:

•  Ask yourself empowering questions and plant suggestions in your subconscious mind (coach)
• Repeat to yourself how proud you are of yourself and show unconditional support (biggest fan)
• Cheer yourself up when you start having negative self-talk (best friend)
• Repeat to yourself: “I love myself” as often as you can/lower your expectations/prime your mind for self-acceptance (lover)

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The 5 Commandments of Personal Development