Words are not just words and thoughts are not just thoughts. It is very important what you say to yourself. Many spiritually bent people seem to believe that words and thinking are obstacles and something to get rid of. (When you stop the inner chatterbox, you can see the reality as it really is.) I think this is a mistake. I think that we must listen carefully to what the inner voice has to say. Very often, it is completely wrong about things. It can come up with the most fantastic excuses, explanations and accusations; it can make you miserable and ruin your life. You cannot silence this voice. There is a better way to deal with it. You can dispute it. You have to show clearly to your inner voice that it is wrong when it is wrong. The inner voice is conditioned habitual thinking, the voice that disputes the conditioning is not conditioned. It tries to see how things really are, here and now.

"Listen! I am not useless. It is true that I made a mistake but that doesn't make me a complete idiot. You are not fair. Some people still like me. And people in general are not assholes. And life is not meaningless. It depends on how you look at things..."

Remember also that it is important to be sincere when you are talking to yourself. Double talk and bullshit may be useful in the outside world but in the inside world it is creates a lot of problems.

I read about this way of looking at things in Martin Seligman's book "Authentic Happiness".