How Do You Treat Yourself?
There’s an old story about two wolves that live inside every person. One is fed by fear, resentment, guilt, insecurity, comparison, and shame. The other is fed by discipline, clarity, self-respect, patience, and truth. They are always fighting. When someone asks which one wins, the answer is simple. The one you feed.
Most people have heard that story before. It sounds familiar, almost obvious, but feeding a wolf doesn’t feel like a choice in the moment. It happens through what you consume, what you dwell on, and how you speak to yourself when no one else is around.
That leads to a more uncomfortable question. How do you treat yourself?
Not publicly. Not when things are going well. Not when you feel confident or motivated. How do you treat yourself in your own head?
For most, if you treated your friends or the people closest to you the way you treat yourself, you wouldn’t have many friends...Most people would distance themselves quickly. Yet we tolerate that tone toward ourselves because it's what we've always done... and there is no external force there to police it.
For a lot of people, thoughts are far looser than they realize. They let them roam without supervision. They assume that just because a thought shows up, it deserves airtime. The problem is that unchecked thoughts rarely stay neutral. They tend to drift toward exaggeration, condemnation, and identity statements. If you let your mind run without restraint, it will eventually build a case against you.
That’s where the idea of taking thoughts captive matters. Not every thought needs to be entertained. Not every thought deserves to be contemplated. Thoughts can be observed without being obeyed. There is a difference between something popping into your mind and something being true. Learning to slow down long enough to ask where a thought came from can change everything.
One of the simplest filters is this. Is the thought rooted in conviction or in guilt and condemnation? Conviction says there is something to work on. It points toward growth, responsibility, and action. Guilt and condemnation say this is who you are. They shut down movement.
One thing I've learned to do is to stop listening to myself and start telling myself what to do. It sounds strange at first. Yet there is a real difference between passively listening to the stream of thoughts that show up and actively correcting them. Listening is reactive. Talking is proactive. If you have a heavy habit of talking down to yourself, the solution isn’t pretending everything is fine. The solution is learning to interrupt and correct distorted narratives before they settle in.
That requires self control, and self control is directly tied to self respect. You will never truly respect yourself if you are a slave to people pleasing and external validation. That applies externally and internally. When your worth is constantly outsourced, your internal world becomes chaotic. Over time, you stop trusting yourself because you have never been in charge.
There is a storm raging inside all of us until we learn to tame it. Taming does not mean silencing everything. It means deciding which voices get authority. If you give your thoughts free rein, they will take you places you never intended to go. If you learn to shut certain thoughts down and replace them with something grounded and true, it makes a measurable difference in how you see yourself.
That internal posture eventually leaks outward. Maybe for a while you can put on a show. People might see you differently than you see yourself. Time has a way of ratting that out. If you don’t see yourself as a good person, capable and worthy of respect, it will surface eventually. Internal disorder always shows up on the outside.
That internal chaos is often rooted in external fertilizer. I enjoy chocolate. From time to time, that’s fine. If I consume it constantly, it will affect how I feel and my health. The same principle applies to what you feed your eyes and ears. If all you watch is garbage and all you listen to is negativity, that is what will come out of you.
A lot of people are aware of this. Awareness isn’t the issue. Knowledge alone doesn’t keep anyone healthy. Activity does. Small compromises add up. Things slowly slide under the flag of “I know it’s not great for me, but I can handle it.” Over time, the wolf being fed becomes stronger.
None of this is about perfection. It’s about stewardship. How you treat yourself mentally matters more than most people want to admit. Your internal world sets the ceiling for your external life. If you want to change what shows up on the outside, you have to pay attention to what you’re feeding on the inside.
The wolves are still fighting. They always will be. The outcome is not random. It’s decided daily, by what you allow, what you challenge, and which you choose to feed.
Today’s Forced Challenge: I want you to FORCE yourself to attack at least one of these challenges:
1. Audit your internal voice: Notice how you talk to yourself when something goes wrong and pay attention to the tone without trying to fix it yet.
2. Stop agreeing automatically: Pause when a negative thought shows up and question where it came from before accepting it as truth.
3. Label the thought: Determine whether it is conviction pointing toward growth or condemnation trying to define who you are.
4. Correct one narrative: Choose a recurring thought you know isn’t accurate and intentionally replace it with something grounded and true.
5. Talk to yourself on purpose: Move from passively listening to your thoughts to actively directing them.
Every day, something is being fed. A thought you rehearsed. A narrative you let linger. A voice you gave authority to. None of it feels dramatic in the moment. Yet over time, it shapes who you become. The wolves don’t need grand gestures to grow. They just need consistency. Pay attention to what you’re feeding, because eventually, one of them will stand up stronger than the other, and you’ll recognize it in the way you live.
“He who conquers himself is the mightiest warrior.”
— Confucius