She ended her message to me with “I hope your day is fabulous!!” I read it just before starting my morning meditation.
The sender of the message didn’t know the day before had been a harder day for me with my anxiety even though I couldn’t identify exactly why (the beauty of anxiety, right?).
When I read the end of her message only one word stood out – the word fabulous. The other words slowly melted into the page, leaving just that one word. Fabulous.
My mind lingered on the word fabulous and my morning meditation about how much self-talk affects our view of ourselves. The things we say to ourselves when we look in the mirror. The things we say to ourselves when we doubt ourselves. The things we say to ourselves when we make mistakes. The things we say to ourselves when we say something we didn’t mean to say.
The way we respond to ourselves affects how we feel about ourselves. Self-cognition starts within. Our understanding of who we are begins with who we believe we are.
I begin my days with a morning prayer and have since I can remember. Some days I’m so busy thinking about what I have ahead of me that day, that I fail to feel peace during my prayers. Now that my kids are all in school I have started meditating at my desk for 15 minutes, followed by 10-15 minutes of journaling to gather my thoughts, center my feelings and allow myself to feel and think about anything. This combination of morning prayer and meditation anchors my days.
Fabulous interlaced itself though my thoughts, popping in and out as I thought about the areas in my life where I self-sabotage. These areas are places the word fabulous needs to pop into.
I tend to find I’m hard on myself in the following areas:
- My work
- My skills
- Myself as a friend
- My anxiety
Everything on this list starts with MY. Think ME. Think about how the things we say about ourselves affect how we feel about ourselves. We can begin to believe them if we don’t catch them early enough.
Years ago I limited myself with self doubt about myself as a mother. With recognition that eventually changed and I no longer find myself questioning myself much, enjoying the process even more than I ever expected.
If I have a hard day with myself with anxiety and choose negative words and thoughts to associate with myself because of my imperfections it can be harder to get out of the negativity.
In a social setting, sometimes I stop myself in my tracks with a screeching halt. Thinking I have something valueable little negative thoughts pop to tell me what I wanted to say wasn’t really knowledgeable enough or even interesting enough or that someone might talk about it (me) negatively later. These thoughts self sabotage my ability to give in relationships.
Years ago I began recognizing the negative words, replacing them with positive words – to shrug (I literally physically shrugged to send a message to my brain that the thoughts didn’t matter) and tell myself the negative words or thoughts are just words. They are not me.
This week my goal is to pick one area of negative thought responses in my life and replace these with the word fabulous.
The sender of the word fabulous, had no idea just how much her one word meant.
