One of the best things about women is how supportive we can be. Whether it’s with family, coworkers, friends, or even perfect strangers sometimes, people come to us with challenges, and we offer words of comfort or encouragement to help them through. We offer this support freely with kindness and love, and people take it in, giving themselves a break and seeing options they didn’t before because of it.

Ironically enough, we don’t tend to offer the same kind of support to ourselves. In fact, we tend to be much harder on ourselves than we ever would be on others. Why is that? Why don’t we give ourselves at least the same support that we give others?

I first noticed this phenomenon personally when I went through my divorce. I said things silently to myself on a daily basis that I wouldn’t ever dream of saying to others once. It was pretty normal throughout the day for me to silently and repeatedly say things like “You’re such a failure” and “No one will ever love you again”. If I’d said those things out loud, I may have understood quickly how destructive they were at a time when I needed support more than anything else. But because they were in my head, they stayed quietly powerful, perpetuating the abuse I’d suffered in the marriage and undermining my healing. When I finally realized those were the thoughts running through my head, I worked to change them into more loving messages, and it made a huge difference in my recovery.

You don’t have to be going through a huge life change or challenge to change your inner thoughts into more supportive messages. Today, I encourage you to be kind to yourself. Pay attention to your inner talk, and stop yourself when your messages are beating you up. Switch gears and talk to yourself as though you were talking to your best friend, and you’ll see the messages naturally become more positive. See what a difference it makes in your day.