One of my biggest obstacles throughout my journey has been overcoming negative self-talk. I have always been great at coming up with reasons; “I’m not good enough”, “can’t do this”, “can’t do that”, “too fat for this”, “not going to turn out well anyway”, “not as pretty as her”, “I’ve failed at this before so why even bother”, “only pretty girls get to do that”, “I’m not good enough anyway”, “I’m not worth it”, on and on the quotes would come. It did not matter what the activity, job, clothes were because I would come up with an excuse why it was not or would not work for me.
I have been working hard at eliminating negative self-talk from my daily habits. Let me tell you, it is hard. Through the process of eliminating it, I have gained so much. I am to the point now where I am about 200% more confident than I was when I began. I believe than anything is possible for ME. I believe that I can do anything. My ability is endless, my integrity is enormous, and my limits are non-existent.
It has meant a lot to me, specifically my weight loss to change my negative self-talk into positive self-talk. Unbeknownst to me, I was keeping myself from losing the weight. I had become secure in knowing that I had a great excuse not to do things. It made me feel horrible, but why would it matter to me. I could not reach any of my goals because I knew if I slipped, or got off track that was it, I was a failure and always would be. If I can’t do it, I can’t do it, right? WRONG!!!
I was stuck in my own shackles. I had set very restricted limitations for myself. There was so much more that I could do, but because I talked down to myself I was missing the opportunities. I needed the opportunity to be who I was, lose the weight and remove that excuse (protective shield) from my life. By slowly eliminating the negative self-talk (one step at a time) from my life, I now have endless limits.
I knew that I had to start with my weight issues. My family has all sorts of different medical issues (I know they are due to weight). Granted, only one person has one maybe two but that is still an unnecessary ailment. I did not want to be where they are. I thought maybe, just maybe, I might be able to prevent myself from having them as well. This is why I needed to change my negative self-talk into positive self-talk.
I was unable to lose the weight, not because I lacked willpower or determination, but because I had told myself over and over what a failure I was. Like many, I had my share of yo-yo dieting. I had been on two diets (once in high school with my mom & once right out of college with a friend) previous to this last time. Yes, I lost weight both times but only about 20 pounds. I would get to that point and stop. They were losing weight faster than me so obviously I was not meant to lose weight. “Look at all those people on t.v. who can lose weight, I’m definitely not as LUCKY as them.” My weight just slowly crept up. “I was the fat kid in school, why would my adult life be any different.” “My destiny was set as a child and I am destined to be fat.” “I’ve tried once, it didn’t work so it never will. I might as well give up now and just get used to it. I’m never going to be pretty anyway.”
It was a process, but I learned that I could do it. I had to force myself to say something nice to myself every day in the mirror. I say force, because at the time I really did not believe it. This is something that has become a good positive self-talk habit for me. I continue to do this daily. There are days when I start out by saying “Wow, you’re still fat.” When I catch myself doing this, I immediately tell myself I am beautiful. Then, there are days I look in the mirror and say, “I am HOTTTT!!!! Everyone who picked on me when I was a kid will be jealous today.” This second part is for all of them who had told me I was a fat pig, boy were they ever wrong. Hehe.
Another thing I learned is that I had to take time to enjoy the days I felt I looked good. At first, this was very few. I had figured out that if I stood there and stared long enough it would sink in deeper. This is where it needed to be. I had to have something to reflect upon on those days when I felt like a fat slob. I had to be able to have an image of me that I could pull up in my mind to change the image I was seeing.
I know I would have been horribly upset if I heard someone say any of those things to another person or themselves. I still find myself filled with a saddened heart when I hear my friends say those things to themselves. It saddens me even more to think that I once had those thoughts. What would my friends tell me if they heard me say that. Hmmm…what did they say? These are the comments I try to remember because I know I told them they were blind if they could not see me how I saw myself. Those are my truest friends, the ones who had to keep repeating the same things when I bombarded them with the same degrading thoughts of myself.
I have learned some tricks to changing negative self-talk about my weight loss, and am still learning some. I have been working on implementing them into other areas of my life. Self-talk is huge, and one never really knows how much of an impact it really has until they start to focus on it. By focusing on the way I talk to myself, changing negative statements into more positive statements, I am able to achieve anything. After all, I would never say those things to another person so why do I say them to myself?
Everyday Extraordinary Mompreneur 