Self-Compassion Works Better Than Self-Esteem
It's interesting that both building high self-esteem and negative self talk (2 directions, same dimension) seem to be the basic activity of Default Mode Network - the mode of the brain activated during mindless mind-wandering. Usually people spend most of their lives in this state. 
The amazing part is that there's strong positive corelation between the DMN activation level and how miserable we feel.  
Judson Brewer has done lot of great research on this. Most meditation techniques go directly against DMN and sometimes result in turning it off for good (look up eg. Gary Weber - https://youtu.be/QeNmydIk8Yo) .