I mentioned the word fabulous a few posts back and how I was going to replace the negative words with fabulous in my mental rhetoric. I began seeing how often I was mentally or verbally qualifying something I do well with a negative, as if I needed to point out the parts I was thinking I don’t do well.
In our self-talk, whether or not we struggle with mental health, we can all find room for improvement. We can find places to tell ourselves the accurate story – the story that portrays us as we really are.
I mentioned the struggles I used to have with how I viewed myself as a mother. I think it’s a pretty common struggle a lot of us find ourselves in at some point, whether we’re viewing ourselves negatively as a mother, a friend, a wife, a business owner (the list goes on). In the height of that struggle I remember praying and asking for help to overcome that struggle.
One day walking down the hallway of our first home I found Matt, who was about three at the time, kneeling at our old flower covered chair. He was praying. His simple words that went something like, “Please bless Mommy to know she is a good mommy,” stopped. Because of my responses to anxiety I had felt I wasn’t a good enough mother. I don’t remember the details, but I’m guessing I’d been using negative self talk about myself that Matt overheard. What I learned was that my son felt otherwise, because his views weren’t clouded by the negativity I had practiced in my self-talk. He was just viewing me as me without the negative.
Although I did have areas I needed to improve, my son could see me for who I was – the mom who loved playing with him and Sam, reading to them for hours, turning on music dancing with them, taking them on walks, letting them make big messes with their playdough, and playing endless hours of Candyland on repeat (you Moms all know how that goes). Yet, somehow I mentally questioned myself and didn’t understand the value of using fabolous in my mental responses to myself.
I was only looking at where I thought I was coming up short, rather than telling myself the true story – that I did have places to improve, but in the rest of the areas I really was fabulous. We don’t have to leave our good out of our mental stories. The stories we tell ourselves are the stories that fuel who we are.
What stories are you telling yourself that aren’t true? Deep inside all of us, I believe we know these stories aren’t true. It’s learning to recognize them as just stories we tell ourselves is the challenge. Getting past this to know who we are outside of these mental stories is where we find the grace to change our self-talk, which then begins to change how we feel.
Print Our Self-Care BINGO
I believe we have the power to change our self-thought and self-doubt. This next week I’m going to keep working on changing my negative self talk (mentally and verbally). What are you working on?
