The enemy in your head.

I believe self-esteem/self-love are essential to a happy life.  If we do not love or even like ourselves, it's like walking round with an enemy in your head.

Everyone has an inner critic - even the most confident people.  The trick is, to learn not to listen to it too much or give what it says too much weight.  Basically, for whatever reason nature designed it, this voice will give you the worst possible take on things.  It's the voice of fear, doubt and self-criticism.  It's the voice of worst case scenario.  It's the worst of your enemy or critic and we all carry this voice around with us every day.

This is the voice that will tell you that you can't.  This is the voice that will tell you're stupid or fat or ugly.  This is the voice that will tell you that other people don't like you or love you.

But did you know that a lot of what this voice says is absolute and utter nonsense?  Have you ever questioned whether what it says is actually true or not?  Very often we don't - this voice natters away at us, all day long and we're so used to it, we take what it says for granted, as true.  But this voice just likes to talk, it likes to repeat things, it likes to just talk, whether or not what it says is true or not.  Have you ever met one of those people that just likes the sound of their voice? The type of person that won't stop talking?  That's what the voice of your inner critic is like - it just likes talking, regardless of the value or truth of what it's saying.

It takes a lot of practise to separate yourself from your thoughts - to become the observer of them, rather than being merged with them, and led in the million different directions that they'll want to take you.  Thoughts are like movie films - they seem so real, but they are actually just thoughts, just passing clouds.

Until you learn to detach from your thoughts, learn to question them you remain at their mercy.  Any negative thought is just a thought but until you learn to detach from the automatic nature of your thoughts, you will be sucked into believing any random thought that pops into your head.

One amazingly simple way of learning to examine the validity of your thoughts, is by following the questions outlined in "The Work" by Bryon Katie.  Here is a link to one of Katie's many videos, if you would like to learn more: