Negative inner thoughts
My self development journey has recently lead me to read a book called The Four Agreements. There is lots of great advice in this book, such as always being direct and clear with your word and never leaving anything unsaid or up to misinterpretation.
The part that has really stuck with me though is the concept introduced by the book of our inner judge - how we go through life constantly criticising and judging ourselves. "The human is the only animal on earth that pays a thousand times for the same mistake... We make a mistake, we judge ourselves, we find ourselves guilty and we punish ourselves... we are guilty again, and we punish ourselves again, and again, and again".
This really stuck with me. The book goes on to further talk about negative self thoughts and as I became conscious of this I went through the next day realizing just how constant the stream of negative and self-judgemental thoughts in my head were. I almost felt insane for being like this my whole life and never seeing it as a problem.
I am now trying to cut out negative self thoughts completely and just be more accepting of myself. I think it's impossible to be your true, confident and calm self if you are constantly judging yourself. I now instead ask myself the question "what if everything about you is just okay the way it is, what if you don't need to change or judge any part of yourself but could just be free and happy exactly as you are?".
I've found this an extremely powerful mindset shift because it completely frees you from the fear of making mistakes, making social blunders, doing something that might risk making a fool of yourself. Because I realized that the only bad thing about all of that was the negative self talk that I knew I would give myself if I messed up. The only person really judging me all this time was myself.