“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name.” (Psalm 103:1)

“Hey you! You — self! — yeah, I’m talking to you. How about blessing God! Everything down inside me, let’s do it!”

British pastor and heart surgeon Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “Most unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself rather than talking to yourself.”

In recent years, motivational people in this country seem to have discovered the power of giving oneself a good talking-to. Denis Waitley has said, “Relentless, repetitive self-talk is what changes our self-image.”

Self talk is the internal dialogue we use to view the world, explain situations, and communicate to ourselves.

The discovery may be recent but the concept is as old as humanity. In fact, we find it all through Scripture. My favorite is this one….

“Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope thou in the Lord!” (Ps. 42:5,11, and Ps. 43:5) David evidently thought so much of the power of self-talk, he makes that statement, then repeats it twice.

Imagine someone chiding himself for being depressed. “Hey, you! What’s going on here? You of all people are sad? And for no reason at all! Come on — put your mind on the Lord! He is your Source.”

That’s the point. And that’s how it’s done.

Does it surprise you to know David was depressed? It doesn’t if you know your Bible. This very morning, my daily reading covered the last half of I Samuel where David has been branded an outlaw by King Saul and is on the run for his life. We can see the tiredness and short-fuse of the man in chapter 25 where David requests help from wealthy Nabal whose flocks and crops David’s men have been protecting. When Nabal refuses, David snaps and is ready to execute the man and destroy everything he owns. I think we can all agree he was overreacting a mite.

Read David’s psalms and the depression is all through them. And yet, almost invariably, he gets his act together — often by giving himself a good talking-to — and ends with praise.

“Return to your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.” (Ps. 116:7) What a great bit of self-talk for the stressed-out soul!

In fact, that 116th Psalm begins with David’s depression (“trouble and sorrow”), progresses with his prayer (“then I called upon the name of the Lord”), and thereafter intermingles his praise to God and his self-talk (to himself: “return to your rest, O my soul” and to God: “for You have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from falling”).

Many of us talk to ourselves, all right, but negatively. We feed our souls a constant diet of “I can’t do that” and “I’m no good at this.” Negative self-talk heightens our stress, shackles our faith, and aborts our ambition. Furthermore, negativism kills our social life because it makes us a pain for others to be around.

The stories are legion on how negative statements from others erode our confidence in ourselves and our calling. But in many cases, the one putting us down is ourselves.

This is why it’s an exercise in faith to speak positively — and to do so out loud (so our minds and hearts can hear it!) — words of confidence and faith and victory. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” is how Paul put it in Philippians 4:13.

When I was a teenager, a story in the Reader’s Digest titled “Don’t Self Yourself Short” made a lasting impression on me. The author, a fashion photographer, told of encountering a striking young woman at a social event and handing her his business card. “I’d like you to consider posing for some work I’m doing,” he told her.

The woman stared at him, then said, “Me? You want me to pose for you—with these huge hands?”

Until that moment, the photographer had not noticed her hands. They may have been a tad oversize, but after she called attention to them, for the rest of the evening all he could see was her shovel-sized hands.

There was no fashion shoot. She had sold herself short.

There is so much negativism in the world today, erecting massive barriers for each person to overcome in order to achieve anything. Let’s not create hurdles for ourselves.

I once told you something Pastor Bill Day of Parkview Baptist Church in Metairie related to the ministers one day when we were meeting at his church. “When I pastored in Florida, there was a fellow in my church who opposed everything I tried to do. If I said