HOW TO CHANGE YOUR SELF TALK
Video Transcript:
Hello there,
My name is Catherine Dickson and I'm a Holistic Health Coach in Seattle, Washington. What I do is I help women work on their relationship with food, their body, and their health as a whole.
So a lot of this work centers around what we think and what we say again and again on repeat. That self talk and really helping our inner critic be a little less loud! So one of the things that has really been coming up lately for a lot of people is that our world is starting to open up, post initial COVID quarantine. People are kind of coming out of hiding so to speak, we've all been at our house, and a lot of my clients have really been feeling some shame about being seen in the world. So their inner critic is being so loud saying things like “God I can't believe you've gained weight,” “When is the last time you exercised,” “Would you stop eating Doritos on the couch already,” or whatever it is. And I bet lots of people can relate to this because you know it happens from time to time! So if you feel like you're in a place where your inner critic is getting way more of a voice than it should and you're really wanting to shift the way that you think about yourself, your body, your behaviors, or anything to do with just feeling better about you. It is all about very systematically and slowly working on changing your thought patterns and your self talk.
So the way that we do that is through a concept called “The next best thought.” So rather than sitting here and saying “Oh my God, I'm going to go from I freaking hate my body, I hate myself, I hate whatever, I'm a hot mess, to I'm a goddess, I'm fabulous, everything is amazing!” That's usually not realistic and/or sustainable and our bodies are smart, our souls are smart, and we're not going to believe that BS. If we're living in this place of hyper negativity, that's just going to feel inauthentic and you're going to feel dumb, truth be told. I mean I know I did when I was starting to work on my body! That was just too much heat, so what I like to say to my clients instead is let's just go one step up from that negative thing that you're saying.
What is the next best thought?
So what that can mean is if it's “I hate my body,” try “I would like to not hate my body.”
“I am working on not hating my body.”
“I would like to feel okay about my body.”
“I would like to look in the mirror and not have an opinion about my body.”
Any of those options can be really powerful and your BS meter doesn't go off quite as much! Because you're choosing an intention, versus a lie right, so what ends up happening is by you saying and you setting that intention for yourself, “I would like to not hate XYZ” or “I would like to not ridicule myself for eating four cupcakes today” or whatever it is. It's saying, “Okay, how can I shift this just a little bit so that it doesn't feel inauthentic, but it also doesn't feel quite so negative.”
So then what happens is you start kind of going up a stair step.
So then you start with changing:
“I hate my body” to “I want to not hate my body”
“I want to feel good about my body”
“I feel ok about my body”
“I want to like my body”
“I like my body”
“I want to love my body”
“I love my body”
So do you see how that goes like it's using your language and using what feels right for you, but literally just hopping up the stairs like a little frog. Just slow and steady, making sure that you believe it every step of the way and if you don't believe it, dial it back and then set the intention again. Just slowly move through the process and over time, all of a sudden you're going to look up and things will have shifted a little bit. Maybe you're not poking and prodding at your skin and your belly rolls and your bat wings. Maybe you're finding yourself being kinder, maybe you're saying things like “You know what, I ate two cupcakes tonight and they were so good! I savored them and I'm not going to beat myself up about it. You know, I get to do that, I get to eat cupcakes. That's allowed.” Or anything that you can think of that you feel negative about or you're trying to compare yourself in and it's just a slow, steady approach. It is a practice, just like anything else, so I really encourage you to give it a try.
Let me know how it goes, I would love for you to comment and and tell me all about it, because this work will change your life. It is so powerful and it may feel very very small at first, but the amazing thing is that our brains are so smart and whatever we tell ourselves is what happens. That's what comes true. That's what we believe, so even as you are starting to tell yourself a different thing over time, you will start to believe it, and your body will start to believe it, and there's such a beautiful piece that comes from that. So I can't wait to hear all about it and get out there and give it a try! Test out a few different ones, because whatever thought you may have on Monday may not resonate quite as well on Wednesday. Because something different happened, so have a few in your arsenal that really feel good to you and literally just roll through them in your head until ones like “Okay, that's the one that works for me!” So all right hope you have a great day and I will talk to you soon! Take care, bye.