How you talk to yourself!

When you wake up and look at yourself in the mirror in the morning what are you thinking? What are the things you are saying to yourself? Are they things that lift you up and empower you or are they things that keep you stuck where you are? Or do you talk to yourself at all? Negative self talk is an epidemic in this country, especially for women. We have been bashing ourselves to ourselves for so long we don't even realize we are doing it anymore.

The first step is to recognize it when you do it. When you find yourself thinking negative things about yourself...stop, tell yourself this is not helping you and replace it with something empowering. And of course, you all know the number rule of 'The Hopefulist' is....that's right. Never, ever call yourself bad names. I just won't tolerate it! Because even if we only say to ourselves we will start to believe. Don't call yourself dumb, fat, lazy, idiotic, etc. Not only is it unproductive, it's just not true. By the way, I still have to remind myself of this rule from time to time too.

The other thing to realize is how damaging these words are to you everyday. Think of yourself like your child or best friend. Would you wake up in the morning and tell your child, I hope you can get through the day without doing anything stupid today. Or look how awful your appearance is...no one will ever want you? Noooo, of course you would never say something like that to other people. Why do we treat ourselves so much worse than we do in the other in our lives? Why do we expect so much more from ourselves than we do others? There are often times I beat myself up for not doing enough for my business so I write out this ridiculously long list of things to do in one day and of course I don't get it all done. Then I bash myself for not doing what I said I would do. But I expected too much. I would never have given a list like that to anyone else. It's the same with losing weight. We are so impatient that we want to lose weight in a week so we starve ourselves and then we break down and binge. We set ourselves up for failure. Not to mention, drastically cutting down on food intake will almost always make you snap in one form or another. Stop expecting so much from ourselves and goshnabbit, stop bashing ourselves when we don't live up to ridiculous expectations.

Once you start realizing how often you engage in negative self talk you can replace it with positive, empowering thoughts and mantras. Yes, this is the hard part. It will be difficult at first. It will feel weird and uncomfortable and corny. But if you can't be kind to yourself, how do we expect others to be kind to us. Treat yourself the way you would like to be treated by others. And guess what? You will no longer need others to be kind to you because you fill that need yourself. But I'm guessing people will still be kind to you. Maybe even more so. So yes, look in the mirror every morning and tell yourself how lucky you feel to be alive. How much you appreciate that you get to make a difference today. Affirm to yourself that you have what it takes to do whatever it is that you want to achieve that day. Notice how much you love the color of your eyes. Or how cute your hair looks today. If you need help with this....write things down on your bathroom mirror and read them. Post it notes work too. I have a sticker that someone gave me at a conference that says "You are Powerful". I change up the rest of it but currently I have "eat foods that nourish your body" and "you are the worth the work" to remind myself of what is important to me right now.

Changing your mindset and your self talk is one of the hardest things you will ever do but it will be so worth the effort. Think of it as a muscle that needs conditioning to get strong. Little steps that will take you to the point where you look in the mirror and know your worth. It won't happen overnight but it will happen if you keep up with it. Trust me on this. Tomorrow we will focus on comparison and how it is the death of joy and will never do anything good for your mindset.

it's Tuesday already! Hope you are having a great day and being your badass self. I'm right here, cheering you on.