Two Exercises Using Self-Talk

Because of a negative stigma associated with self-talk, we may regard a person who does so as "out of one's mind".  But in fact we spent a lot of time each day engaging in inner dialogues and frequently talking to ourselves under our breath.  Many of those silent thoughts are based on our distorted views and self-defeating beliefs which often lead to negative emotions.  But perhaps we can also use our inner talk to experience a shift by engaging in these exercises:

Exercise One:
For the next 24 hours, skip the words "I" or "me", "mine", "myself" for any self-talk you might have using yourself as a pronoun.  So "I want to eat an apple." becomes "Eat an apple."  Or "I am so happy." becomes "So happy."

Exercise Two:
For all dialogues that you have with yourself, skip your comparison and instead describe something without labels of value judgement.  Example of such predefined labels are good, bad, love, hate, like, dislike...Those are all labels of definition we use based on splits and differentiation, which of course are also words of polarity or extremes.

Observe how you feel at the of a day when you have done these exercises.  Do you feel different?  Are you more calm?  And do you notice that the second exercise becomes easier when the "I" or "me" wither away?