In WW we’ve been addressing this topic for years. I remember using the quote above in one of my first workshops 8 years ago and I know many of you have been WW members for far longer. So, how’s the self-talk going for you? Have you changed your inner dialogue? A lot? Very little? Not at all? Why?
Self-talk, whether it’s positive or negative, is like any
other habit in our lives: at some point we developed a behaviour and just kept
doing it. As with any other habit we
want to change, understanding when and why we began the habit can give us
insight into our behaviour. Obviously, I
can’t speak for anyone else but I do know my negative self talk was given to me
as a child by the adults in my life. To
be clear, this is not an exercise in laying blame. As a child, and young adult,
I often laid blame on my adults but once I started making my own mistakes in
life, I started to realize, like everyone else I was just doing the best I could
based on what I knew and had been taught.
We do not come into this world thinking we are unworthy; we may own that
feeling like we did but our sense of self-worth, positive or negative, was born
out the actions and words used by our adults. The purpose of reflection in this
instance is to establish when and how those feelings started so we can understand
what we believe to be true about ourselves.
Whenever I talk smack to myself, or about myself, it all
stems back to the comments made by my adults: you can’t do that, that will
never work, don’t talk so much, sit down and be quiet..etc, etc, etc. But here’s the thing; there were times when I
couldn’t do something or something would not work as I planned to do it,
or I did talk too much at certain times and needed to sit down and be quiet. The problem was I rarely (in my mind, never)
got the flip side: you can do that, that will work, tell us more,
we want to hear what you have to say. If
we had been given lots of positive reinforcement, then perhaps the negative
comments we did receive would not have become the foundation of what we believe
to be true about ourselves. After a
while, we didn’t need others to reinforce those beliefs, we did it ourselves.
As kids, of course, we couldn’t have known that perhaps our
adults were simply passing on what they had been told or what they believed
about themselves. In this case, even
when we have discovered why and how we started our pattern, it doesn’t matter
what we now know, what matters is what we still believe. We can’t
change our beliefs until we change what we know, or what we think/believe we
know. How might your life have been
different had you grown up with a positive personal belief system? How might your WW plan be different? Reflection doesn’t change what happened in
the past but often when we understand something, we are able to let it go and start
to make the changes we want within ourselves. My reflection has led me to
believe so many of the comments I heard as a child probably had nothing to do
with me. Even as I write it, the thought
still stuns me. Imagine a comment that hurt
you as a child. Now imagine the person who made it and what might have been
going on in their mind. Have you ever
made a comment that upon reflection realized it had more to do with how you felt
about yourself than the person you said it to? I often think about mean old Bertha,
the lady who always just called me Chubby.
How did she really feel about herself?
What was said to her as a child? Doesn't make what she said right, but
it does offer me another way of looking at it: maybe it was not about me.
Every time this topic comes up in WW you are being handed an
opportunity, an opportunity to take back the worthiness you were born with but
never got a chance to know. Maybe last
time we talked about it you weren’t in the headspace to hear it, or maybe your age-old
beliefs were still too strong. Maybe now
you’re tired of your negative self-talk and really want to change. Maybe now
you’re ready to start believing how great, wonderful and fabulous your friends say
you are! Why not, what have you got to
lose, other than some pain and self-loathing? Nothing. But, if you find it hard to start
talking to yourself the way your good friends do, why not start by talking to
yourself the way you talk to your animals, kids or grandkids? That will tell you what to say!
