You trip, hear a crash, and stiffen. You've just dropped and smashed the plate you were holding and so starts the onslaught of thoughts, unflinching and unwavering.

"This is so typical of you. Why couldn't you have been more careful? Always so clumsy."

It's an automatic reflex to respond that way when you make a mistake. It seems so natural to hold yourself accountable for every single misstep that might occur. It feels so easy to beat yourself up every step of the way. There has to be some sort of reason to be kind to yourself; it's often so conditional.

"I'll be nicer to myself after I've done something to deserve it."

But what if you talked the way you talk to yourself the same way you talked to other people? Whenever your best friends make mistakes, you're consoling and understanding. You don't expect complete perfection from them, and encourage them to grow from their mistakes.

You don't beat them down when they fail to live up to impossible standards, and you take joy in simply being with them as they are right now. You don't compare them to other friends as you spend time with them.

And yet it's so difficult to be as understanding with yourself. Why is it so incredibly difficult to see yourself as your own best friend or advocate?

As stated by Rick Hanson, Ph.D. and neuropsychologist, humans are evolutionarily wired with a negativity bias. As such, our minds fixate on the negatives of our actions far more than the positives of our actions. We discard all of the things we're doing right and fixate on everything we've "messed up."

With the benefits of positive thinking so heavily supported, it's clear that positive thinking is beneficial to your personal growth, and yet it's so hard to get out of the mindset of berating yourself at every turn.

It's never easy to make the change but try to be more aware of how you talk to yourself both when you make a mistake and when you succeed in something. Then, after becoming aware of how you talk to yourself, start trying to be more compassionate; you, like your close friends, are in the process of growing, and it's natural to make some mistakes here and there. After all, how else could you learn?