“Oh my God, look at your thighs, they look like cottage cheese!”
“Ugh, your saggy mummy tummy is so disgusting.”
“You will never get that job, you don’t have what it takes.”
“Get it together, other moms can do it, why can’t you?”
Has anyone ever said something like this to you?
What if someone said these things to your child or your best friend? What would you say? What would you do?
You’d be outraged right?!
But here is the thing – I bet you have said these things to yourself. I would even wager that you say something similar to yourself everyday. And you probably have been saying it for so long that you don’t even realize it.
We are our own worst critic. We demoralize ourselves, we put ourselves down and we are just plain mean. We are the bully in the playground who stops us short from living our lives fully with meaning and passion.
Most of us carry around mistaken beliefs that we are not good enough. We have this reel that plays over and over again in our head – I’m not pretty enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not thin enough, I’m not funny enough – that resulted from childhood conditioning or experiences.
And we’ve been playing this reel for so long that we have actually bought into it and limit our experience of life.
And here is the thing – our little people are so in tune with us that they too pick up on this reel and it becomes part of their inner dialogue. So not only do we owe it to ourselves to be loving and kind with our words and actions, we also owe it to our children.
So how do we turn it off
~ Pay attention. Bring awareness to how you speak to yourself and how you look at yourself. You might even jot some notes down in a journal.
~ Forgive Yourself. The next time you hear your negative inner real or behaviour pop up during the day pause and ask: Is this true? And then forgive yourself for being anything less than kind and loving to yourself.
~ Create a new reel. Once you have paused and released the negativity, replace the thought with a positive truth. If your reel is: ‘god my thighs are flabby’, try out ‘wow, my legs are powerful, without them I couldn’t dance!
~ Practice Gratitude. Give thanks to all of those parts of you that you think are ‘less than’. In the shower, wash your body with love and reverence. Put on your makeup and say a thank you for your beautiful brown/green/blue/gray eyes. Finish a task at work and send gratitude to your astute mind. Give your child a hug and send gratitude to your heart for being so loving.
Like anything, shifting our own internal negative reel takes time, practice and patience. But once you shift from feeling not enough, you will have the energy and gusto to go for what you really want in life. Your passion and excitement will inspire those around you.
And your little people will reorient themselves in the same direction.
This Friday I will be leading my second workshop in the Ignite Your Life Series: ‘Fall Madly, Deeply in Love…with Yourself. If you are in Ottawa, come check it out! Click here for more details.
Have a great day gorgeous mama,
maria 🙂
