Is It Okay To Talk To Yourself While Meditating?

Do you have a tendency to speak with yourself while meditating? This is normal, and nothing to be alarmed of. In fact, it’s one of the most common distractions beginners experience when they start meditating. 

But don’t put yourself down over it, simply observe the conversation that’s going on in your mind, and without putting much resistance, you can bring your attention back to your breath or a mantra that was keeping you present. 

Now, talking to yourself while meditating can be distracting and disrupt the experience, but it’s no secret that to meditate correctly, we will face hardships because it’s part of the process. Instead of fighting it, learn to love this hardship and learn to love the struggle. That way, you become unstoppable, no matter what. 

You reach a point where nothing can take you out of the profound peace of mind you’re experiencing, not your mind or surroundings. 

Peace of mind takes time to cultivate, it’s like growing crops on a farm, but once they are grown, they feed your mind and soul for life. 

Pre-adoption of any habit worth keeping will always be the hardest part of the journey and growing to love it is difficult. Sometimes, you won’t want to meditate because of these hurdles. 

The self-talk we focus on when meditation isn’t always positive. Many times, it’s a recap of the day and how we could’ve approached things. Even if it’s positive, it’s turning away from what we have in front of us. The now. But noticed I say focusing. 

This conversation can still coexist with your meditation. Simply, observing this conversation without giving a reaction already puts you ahead of your mind. Your mind and thoughts are their own separate entities to you.  

Observation and Detachment

Observing your thoughts or any conversation you have in your mind at the time of meditating, without engaging with it will lead to their detachment, so long as such talk doesn’t contribute to anything positive. 

Over time, with meditation, you can learn to love yourself. And if you have a habit of talking to yourself all the time, even outside the meditation, try changing this talk to positive self-talk. 

Fortunately, this becomes easier the more you meditate. You start to think of possibilities rather than limitations and make the best out of any situation you are in while understanding there always will be things outside of your control. 

Once you do something about the variables within your control, everything else falls into place. 

You can’t choose the cards you’re given, but you can always choose how you play with those cards. If, on the contrary, you try to stop these thoughts, they will amplify. The mind doesn’t want to be deprived of its ability to think. 

But I find it’s easier to not be affected by the negative self-talk if we think of the bigger picture. Thoughts that lead to negative self-talk come in waves, at times, it’s filled with negative thoughts. 

But with meditation, you learn how to let go of the thoughts you don’t want and keep the thoughts you do want. Meditation is a perfect way to cleanse the mind, and so is yoga. 

It makes sense if we look at it logically. Would you be offended by negative self-talk if you weren’t the victim? You can look at things from a third-person point of view. 

And while negative self-talk may affect you from a third-person point of view, it’s unlikely to affect you to the same degree as if you attached your identity to this talk and believed everything your mind had to say and experienced them first-hand. 

Thoughts are constantly evolving and dynamic, one day we can engage in negative self-talk while another we can engage in constructive self-talk. It’s unstable by default but we can make it stable by being active pilots of our life. 

If we surrender that control to the mind, other people or external circumstances are able to drive our awareness outside of the present, in hopes of escaping what we are currently facing, rather than confronting it head-on. 

Being Open With Yourself

Accept that these thoughts are presently part of you and have an open conversation with yourself where you engage logically with yourself, post-meditation. 

By that time, your mind would’ve been cleared from the clutter that clouded your judgment, and you’re better able to trace the source of negative talk that was bringing you down. 

Thus, it will make even less sense to believe these conversations, to begin with. As you gradually get more control of this part and are better able to pick your thoughts, experiment with what happens if you start deliberately engaging with empowering thoughts throughout the day, that lead to your personal growth and pursuit of your best self. 

Simply focusing on what you don’t want will manifest more of that, whereas focusing on the possibilities will make you seem more of them when you would have otherwise been oblivious to them because your mind was cluttered enough to not take a step back and observe what actions you can take for your personal growth. 

The more open you are with yourself, and the less you repress what you find uncomfortable, the more you’re able to get rid of the source culprit for bringing you down. 

Even if you learned to talk to yourself positively, you may still gravitate elsewhere than the present, at which point, you’ll still want to observe your thoughts. 

It can feel comfortable to move our attention away to something that’s pleasant, but it’s important we make our present pleasant, rather than running away from it. Because creating a pleasant present is what brings a pleasant future. 

We can have false projections and expectations of the future that don’t end up lining up with how we imagined things would’ve been, therefore, it’s crucial we understand on a subconscious and conscious level that all we have is the now, at the condition where it’s at. 

We can make changes to the now by being honest with ourselves and acknowledging the now as it is. Talking to yourself in present tense helps, you can repeat a mantra such as “I am”, either mentally or vocally. 

When you focus on the present, you’re more likely to turn away from negative thoughts, so long as you approach the present with acceptance, which becomes more of a possibility the more you meditate. 

Loving yourself will often be a byproduct of engaging in habits that reflect love over yourself, and that can often be reflected in how you talk to yourself. 

How Should You Talk With Yourself?

Think of yourself as a best friend or a lover, and talk with yourself as your own personal guide. There’s nothing more gratifying than attributing your own progress to yourself. It increases your confidence and helps you to become a high achiever. 

But it’s a process. At this point, you learn that you can rely on yourself and don’t depend on anyone else to be happy, but instead, you’re capable of sharing this happiness with others. 

This is something you may notice more of if you’ve been one of the unfortunate ones that have had various breakups under your belt.

At the end of the day, the only one that is gonna stick with you throughout your entire lifespan is you, so you might as well create the best relationship you can with yourself, and it will reflect in the relationship you form with others. 

Once you figure out your own world, everything else falls into place. Talking to yourself during meditation is very likely to happen, but more so when you are starting out. 

You haven’t mastered silence and observation of your thoughts, which, in turn, can lead to new thoughts and ideas. 

Meditation is the best way to spend quality time with yourself and get to know who you really are. 

If there were any unknown or repressed qualities in you that you want to change, you always can, as you’re no longer just experiencing your ego or who you think you are, but you’re actually able to view yourself almost from the lens of a best friend or significant other. 

You can be your best friend as much as you can be your worst foe, which side you choose will depend on you.

However, the following scenario is also common during meditation: You meditate for 20 minutes, and after the 20 minutes, you start talking to yourself, but before the 20-minute mark passed, you were in a deep state of relaxation. 

This can be an indication that the meditation should stop there. Even if it turns into a shorter meditation. Finding the balance between the quality and consistency of meditation is key in making meditation have a positive effect on your day-to-day life.