Being Your Own Friend By Replacing Fear & Loneliness With Kindness & Joy

I learned to be my own friend by changing my inner conversation.

How? I apply nonverbal kindness to me! Yep, words too.

My little habits lead to attitudes and actions that banish fear.

That gives me the mental fortitude to deal with fear because I know that I’ve got tiny tools to do what I need to do whatever happens.

My little exercises are tools that I’ve turned into habits that tend to replace fear and loneliness with kindness and joy.

Because I’m here with myself all the time! Because I’m daring to make personal growth light, fun and doable. Because I’ve chosen a path of continuous improvement of me.

One of the things that matters in gaining the mental fortitude to deal with fear is your inner dialogue.

By that I mean your own conversation with yourself. It’s a conversation you may not even be aware of because it’s often expressed by attitudes and actions rather than by words.

There’s a direct relationship between your growth and the ongoing conversation you have with yourself.

Those attitudes you’ve got, those actions you take, and yes, the comments you make inside yourself, as you go moment by moment through each day, matter more than you realize.

Sometimes that inner stuff isn’t positive, right?

But to grow, you need to reach for positive feedback.

The easiest place to get it is from you! The easiest path to being able to give it to yourself is by little things you choose to do on a regular basis.

That way you build up habits and routines that you can guide yourself with even when life’s inevitable bumps and storms come your way.

One first way is awareness. DECIDE now that whenever you MAY be aware of negative feelings, you’ll pay close attention.

After that, you may then catch yourself making disparaging comments about yourself or catch yourself in behavior that’s not in your best interests.

Notice it. Simply notice it. Become aware without adding anything else at all.

Next, your personal growth requires that you learn a habit of encouraging, positive, and reassuring attitudes, actions and yes, even words within to yourself.

It may be difficult for you to try this, but it’s worth working on.

Practice giving yourself a positive word of encouragement right now. Recognize something you did today that was positive. Smile when you find one! Then allow yourself to take on an inner attitude and the actual words of, “Good job!”

This feedback to yourself may feel silly.

At first. But when you notice results – you can become okay with silly, right?

Effective will eventually become your new word for giving yourself positive feedback.

For now, hey, go with silly as long as you DO the “Good job!” recognition regularly.

Practice matters here.

In fact, as you practice positive feedback from yourself in words, attitude and actions will naturally help you reduce fear, worry and other unfortunate stuff that may be going on.

This process will slowly work on you, allowing you to open yourself to more personal growth day by day.

To some extent it works by removing the shadow of the negative and slowly replacing it with a bunch of small stuff that’s positive!

If you want to learn some of the background of why it works, a good place to start is the experimental research psychology work of Dr. B.F. Skinner. If you look deeply into his work, you’ll figure out why I personally choose to work with positive feedback (as well as why I avoid the negative feedback that I’ve seen others use).

Start with this moment.

Right now!

Give yourself the treat of one deep breath.

Because one slow, deep breath in and then slowly out is a tool to helping you relax.

Inducing the relaxation response is important.

Being a little bit more relaxed helps you let go of negative experiences such as fear, overwhelm, anxiety, worry or whatever it is that’s vexing you.

Learning to step out of a negative experience is an important way to take care of yourself — and learning to actually DO this on a regular, routine basis works dramatic change over time.

Yes, simply learning to recognize you’re doing a good job and learning to pay attention to one breath can change your life.

Yes, repeating this one breath – now in a row or just now and then! – is an important part of that process.

Yes, I’ve got many such tools. Today I wanted to share these simple little ones with you.

Try it! You’re doing a good job on some small stuff in your life, right? You’ve got to breathe anyway, right?

You may as well say “Good job!” from time to time and use your breath to be your own friend. Then? Dare to develop a routine of keeping on replacing fear, loneliness and other negatives with kindness, joy and personal growth.