Today’s adulting hack is all about how to stop mentally beating yourself up one thought at a time.

Do you have one negative, nasty thought that plays in your mind over and over again? Maybe you have dozens. Maybe even hundreds. Whether you know it or not, these repetitive negative thoughts are weakening your confidence and keeping you in what is called a “negative feedback loop.”

Here’s how it works:

Lets say at work you’re always saying to yourself, “I’m terrible at my job. I don’t know what I’m doing and any day I’m going to get fired.” Every time you say something like this to yourself, you’re unconsciously reinforcing this belief. This belief starts to influence how you approach your job. It will make you start doubt yourself and your abilities at every turn. Most likely you’ll start to make mistakes and then you’ll say to yourself, “I’m terrible at my job.” That’s a negative feedback loop, your original belief about yourself becomes your truth. It’s easy to get stuck in that loop and the only way to get out of this circle is to change your thoughts.

Here’s your hack:

One simple thing you can do is challenge the thought and replace it with a kinder, gentler thought. One of my favorite sayings is, “Just because you have a thought doesn’t make it true.” In the example above, let’s go back to the original thought of, “I’m terrible at my job,” and I want you to challenge the thought. Ask yourself, “Am I really terrible at my job? Do I make a mistake on every single task I’m given? Does my ever tell me that I’m close to being fired?” What I find is that our original negative absolute thought isn’t the complete truth. We tend to focus on the 1 or 2 mistakes we make as opposed to the 99 things we do right every day. What if you replace, “I’m terrible at my job” with, “There are several aspects of my job that I’m really good at and there are others that needs improvement. My boss is not going to praise me when I do something right but I need to remember that I nail 99% of my tasks and when I make that mistake I always own up to it and correct it.” Once a day for the next week I want you to challenge and replace one negative thought. After a week, aim for two thoughts and day and increase by one thought each week.