"ur inner voices are incredible problem-solving tools. Just ask anyone who has spent time in the presence of a toddler."

"Psychologist Ethan Kross calls this dark side of our minds “chatter.” As he writes in his book exploring the subject: “Chatter consists of the cyclical negative thoughts and emotions that turn our singular capacity for introspection into a curse rather than a blessing. It puts our performance, decision-making, relationships, happiness, and health in jeopardy.”"

"In 2003, psychologist Kristin Neff developed a scale designed to assess self-compassion. She included three necessary elements: self-kindness (being warm and understanding toward yourself), mindfulness (neither exaggerating nor suppressing negative emotions), and common humanity (realizing challenges and imperfections are a shared human experience)."

"Neff’s initial two studies exploring this self-compassion scale — both published in Self and Identity — found that self-compassion was associated with greater life satisfaction and improved mental health."

"However, she is quick to point out that self-compassion is not about always feeling good. Rather, it’s a “practice of goodwill.”"

"Self-compassion doesn’t mean ignoring your faults and shortcomings, but accepting them with the same kindness you would those of a friend or loved one."

"Conversely, self-compassion correlated negatively with harmful coping strategies such as denial, self-blame, and rumination."

"In other words, the more self-compassion people demonstrated, the more likely they coped with life’s challenges and adversities in ways that promote psychological health."

"When trying to think through our own problems, we can often become roiled in the associated emotions and social dangers. This can lead us to forgo our best judgment and lash out internally."

"We begin to over-identify with our emotions and problems. At such points, we need to develop some distance from both, and this is where Kross’s second strategy comes in."

"Distanced self-talk is when you speak to yourself — whether aloud or in your head — as though you are speaking to another person."

"“There is a potent psychological comfort that comes from normalizing experiences, from knowing that what you’re experiencing isn’t unique to you, but rather something everyone experiences — that, unpleasant as it is, it’s just the stuff of life,” Kross writes."

"This is why the universal you is the subject of many adages, maxims, and proverbs."

"Other experiments have shown that distanced self-talk allows people to make better first impressions, improves performance on stressful problem-solving tasks, and facilitates wise reasoning, just as fly-on-the-wall distancing strategies do,” Kross writes in Chatter."

"The challenge, then, is to develop the techniques that can help us cultivate inner voices that err on the side of kindness. Toward that goal, Kross has developed a whole set of mental tools people can experiment with."

"Whatever practices you choose, remember that they should focus on the golden rule of self-compassion: Treat yourself with the same kindness you treat others with."

"And if you need help seeing that in action, just spend some time in the presence of a toddler — they’re really good at this kind of thing."