Latest / Spiritual Sense: Practical wisdom to quiet an overthinking mind and recharge your soul / How to talk lovingly to yourself

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How to talk lovingly to yourself · Spiritual Sense: Practical wisdom to quiet an overthinking mind and recharge your soul

• 0:00
  Many blessings. Thank you for your presence.
• 0:03
  Today we're diving into how to talk lovingly to yourself, because you are, of course, a wonderful, wonderful soul.
• 0:14
  Welcome to Spiritual Sense daily podcast.
• 0:19
  I'm Michael McIntosh and I've spent nearly three decades diving deep into spirituality meditation and helped hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. And it's such a pleasure to be here talking to you.
• 0:35
  So how do we talk lovingly to ourselves?
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  We have a relationship with ourself.
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  First and foremost, our relationship is with ourselves. We're always with ourselves and we are always actually talking to ourselves.
• 0:57
  That is what thinking is.
• 1:00
  Thinking is just having a conversation with ourself.
• 1:06
  And if we speak out loud to ourselves, which is perfectly fine by the way, if you speak out loud to yourself, I speak to myself out loud sometimes because you can hear your own conversation more clearly. So we always are talking to ourselves. As long as we're awake and the mind is moving, we're having a conversation.
• 1:27
  And so most people don't really know what that conversation is because it's in the background.
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  This is one of the main benefits of meditation, is that if you sit in silence in the morning, you get to actually notice your mind.
• 1:52
  And there are two types of things happening in the mind. There is the content, what am I thinking about?
• 2:00
  You know, what types of images are in the mind, what types of sounds, what types of focusing am I doing right? What is the actual content? And then there is the way we're speaking to ourselves, the tone of voice, the general vibe, the context.
• 2:22
  And many people who I've coached and supported over the years, when I've really asked them, what's going on in your mind? They've said that they have a quite a nasty sounding voice in their head. The way they talk to themselves is not very loving.
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  In other words, their tone of voice and the words together are very grating and self critical and nasty.
• 2:54
  Many people have, for example, their mother's voice in their head. I say listen to the voice. What does it sound like? Your. Your own thoughts when you. When. Because when we think thoughts, it's not just the words, there's a tone.
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  What is the sound of that tone? Just. Just do it now for a moment. Just take a moment and think something.
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  Just notice what's going on for a moment.
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  The mind is a fascinating place.
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  It can have all kinds of things going on there that all the five senses are in the mind. We can see things, smell things, taste things, touch things, and hear things in the mind.
• 3:55
  And there are different tones of voices different images.
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  Many people have told me that there's, there's all this chaos going on. And I know this for myself. You know, I remember when I first started meditating, I remember sitting there on my first meditation class when I really got serious and started doing it properly, going, what is going on here? This is complete chaos. I mean, what is this? There's all kinds of music in there and there's all these random movies and all this stuff. I'm like, good Lord.
• 4:28
  So it can be a bit disturbing. This is why a lot of people start meditation and then abandon it, because they have to deal with all this stuff in their head, right? And it's like, oh my goodness, this is way too intense. I can't be bothered with this. Let me pick up my phone and distract myself from this madness in my head. Problem with all that is that as we consume more and more content that goes into our mind and then it gets regurgitated in dreams and it's in the background of our head. So whatever we see and focus on goes in our mind and then we have to deal with it. So ultimately we have to learn how to deal with our thoughts because there's no way around it.
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  So one upgrade you can make is to aim to change the tone of voice. In other words, to speak to yourself consciously in a loving way.
• 5:23
  So I'll give an example.
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  I spend rather a large amount of time doing quite difficult things, right? Like doing work that's a bit difficult or doing practices that are a bit difficult. And I've just accepted that that's necessary for me to get where I want to go in life. I have to do stuff that's a bit hard.
• 5:44
  So in the past, what I used to do is I would tell myself, oh, it's too hard, don't bother doing it, you know, what's the point of this?
• 5:52
  Do it later, etc. Etc. And I wouldn't do it now. What I do is I, I acknowledge that it's difficult and I say, okay, I'm going to do this thing, I'm going to set a timer, I'm going to work on this project, or I'm going to do this meditation.
• 6:07
  And, and then I, I focus on whatever I'm doing. And then afterwards I actually put my hand on my heart and I say, Michael, well done, Congratulations. And I give myself like a little like a loving self talk. I just say, well done. This is well done. You did, you did great. You know, that was hard to do. You did it anyway. Well done, congratulations. You know, so, like, instead of saying, why didn't you do more of that? What's wrong with you? You should have changed it. How come this is taken from, why didn't you do this earlier?
• 6:39
  That's all self criticism now. I just put my hands on my heart and I say, well done. Congratulations. You're doing great. You're doing great. I love you. I appreciate you. You're just a wonderful soul. Thank. Thank you so much. Well done.
• 6:52
  So I'm talking to myself with a loving context, a loving energy, a loving tone, a loving energy.
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  And if. If, for example, I'm having a hard day and there's everything seems to have gone horribly wrong and there's all these challenges, then I'll say things like, you're doing the best you can. You really are doing the best you can. This is difficult if you. It is a difficult situation, and it's going to be all right. It's going to be all right.
• 7:24
  So there's a higher part of us, which is our real self, who can talk to this lower part of us, or you could say the. The human self with so much love and kindness and compassion.
• 7:39
  And it just feels really lovely to do that.
• 7:44
  Oftentimes I notice that there is a part of me that is in some ways, immune to everything. I remember one time I was in India and I got really sick.
• 7:58
  I had eaten about a thousand mangoes over, like, three or four months. They were the best mangoes in the world. And I'm not sure it was the mangoes, but whatever it was, I got really, really sick. And I felt like I. I might have died if I didn't do something. So I couldn't even get out of bed. I couldn't drink water. I couldn't do anything. Pounding headache, just pain everywhere. I don't know. I'm not sure what the actual issue was.
• 8:27
  But anyway, there was some part of me that was okay with all of these things happening.
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  And when I stopped resisting, this. This higher part of me said, look, Michael, just.
• 8:43
  Just let go. Just totally let go. Stop resisting, because it's not helping. Because the lower mind says, I don't like it, I don't like it. I don't want it. I don't want it. I don't like it. Right.
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  But the higher self says, it's okay. You're going to be fine. You're safe.
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  Just let go. Just totally surrender.
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  And then I entered into this profound, profound peace.
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  And then after that, after I fell asleep and woke up and I started feeling better and I could get out bed and finally recover.
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  That was very, very crazy time. But these things happen in many, many ways in our life all the time.
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  So there's situations happening, there's the lower mind stressing out about it, and then there's this other part of us that is okay. And so we need to develop and strengthen that part of us which is really who we are. That's our higher self. That's our real self.
• 9:50
  And so just to give yourself so much love, that you deserve that. You're a wonderful soul. I really appreciate you. I really appreciate all the hard work, just like you would talking to somebody else who's going through life and having various challenges.
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  The best thing you can do is to develop this. I love myself. You're doing great.
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  Well done. Congratulations.
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  Just do a little bit, you know, that's what I tell myself.
• 10:18
  Just. Just do a little bit. You don't. You don't want to do this thing right now. It's all right. Just take a little break, have some water, have some tea, you know, take a nap. But then let's do this thing that you need to do. It's going to be all right.
• 10:33
  When then I give so much appreciation. Well done. Congratulations. You're doing great. Doing great.
• 10:39
  Because we need to be a cheerleader for ourselves. We need to be a loving support, a loving parent, a loving friend, a loving coach, a loving teacher, a loving guru in a way to talk to ourselves with that. That kindness.
• 10:56
  So that's what I recommend. These are short sessions, so I'm not going to get into too much detail, but just notice the tone of voice that you have.
• 11:06
  What is your tone?
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  And how can you start sending that love, that kindness, that grace to yourself and really congratulating yourself, appreciating all the things that you do, all the difficulties that you've come through.
• 11:25
  Tell yourself it's going to be all right.
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  And just speak to yourself. With so much love.
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  And as you start doing it, it gets more and more and more until you feel great. It's just a wonderful. Such a beautiful thing.
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  So hopefully this has been helpful. Wishing you so much love in your heart. I hope you have a beautiful internal experience because you are with yourself forever.
• 11:54
  You might as well like yourself and love yourself, care about yourself.
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  And if you'd like to take this deeper, we have all kinds of free courses, programs, all completely free, that you can get in the link, in the description.
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  And all we ask really is if this has been helpful for you, then go ahead and share it with somebody or leave a review.
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  So that we can reach more people. Our whole intention with all these things that we do is just to help people feel more, love more peace, experience higher states of consciousness and have a healthy, wealthy, happy life.
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  Thank you for your beautiful presence and talk to you soon. Many, many blessings.
• 12:43
  Sa.