Your greatest enemy is you.

Well, I just gave it all away in the first sentence of the blog here. So, if you want, you can move on knowing the truth about who your greatest enemy is.

But if you want to know more about how this enemy works, how to work WITH them and not against them, and how you can make them your greatest ally, then stick around because I’d love to share this information with you. We could all use some better camaraderie with ourselves.

How Does This Enemy Work?

We are our own worst critics.

We can be so hard on ourselves sometimes. Maybe it’s just me, but I set high expectations for myself, and when I don’t meet my own expectations I feel flawed. Can you relate at all?

Is there constantly a little voice in your head trying to sway you one way or another? This voice can either praise us for our efforts or condemn us for even trying.

This voice is always analyzing what we are doing. It’s constantly interpreting every move we make and forming an opinion about us.

It’s really hard to shut this voice off, whether it’s good or bad. And since it’s pretty hard to think of nothing, we have to find a way to control it and use it for our own good.

What is your voice telling you?

How Can We Work Better With Ourselves?

Since we know that our thought process is practically constant, we also better know that we get to choose what this voice in our head is saying.

We get to choose whether this voice is praising or condemning us.

And maybe I shouldn’t even use the word, “praise” because it insinuates self-flattery and pride. That’s not what I’m getting at here. We just want to shift our thoughts from condemnation to encouragement.

We want to steer the voice in our head to focus on the positive as often as possible.

We also don’t want this voice to be naïve either. It should see the challenge ahead and immediately choose to find a solution rather than focusing on the problem.

Does your voice tend to focus on the problem? I know mine often does.

But we can change this. We can turn this all around.

It’s not easy but it’s possible. All it takes is a little training.

How can I apply this?

When you are struggling during a workout your mind may immediately go to thinking, “this is hard, my body hurts, and I don’t like it.” And maybe those thoughts are true.

But the key is to not get stuck in a negative thought loop and instead shift the thought to, “yeah, this may be hard but I’m doing my body good and I will feel better when I leave. The temporary pain will lead me to a healthier lifestyle.”

You don’t have to lie to yourself and say you love exercising if you really don’t. The key here is to stop the negative thought loop and challenge your negative thoughts with positive thoughts. You can even speak encouraging words out loud, if you have the opportunity.

Maybe the voice in your head is telling you that you’re not good enough or you’re not smart enough for something in particular.

Take this as an opportunity to learn more about that particular subject and grow. Don’t let the negative background noise in your head deter you from perfecting a skill or learning something new. Say to yourself, “Ok, so maybe I’ve never excelled in this particular area before but it’s important to me so I’m going to put the time and energy into it in order to grow.” Then immediately start laying out a plan of action for how you are going to grow in this area and put it on your calendar or it won’t happen!

If we let a negative voice in our head control us, we are going to be a lot less satisfied with ourselves and how we live our lives. This doesn’t have to be our reality.

We are our own worst enemy but we can become our greatest ally

Mental health is a huge part of our overall health and affects everything.

I’m not trying to fix everything in this one short blog. But I hope that I can shed some light on the issue of negative self-talk and give you some encouragement so you know that you can fix this.

You CAN change the voice in your head.

You CAN turn negative thoughts into positive ones.

And you can turn your greatest enemy into your greatest ally.

It all starts with what you tell yourself today.

Words of encouragement or words of condemnation.

What will you choose?

Comment below and tell us some ways you control the negative voice in your head and make it positive. We could all use some help in this area.