You know who needs to finally do one? Your inner mean girl. AKA your ego. The one always in your head talking crap at you in the misguided belief she’s keeping you safe. When I first got sick I began to hate my body and how it was letting me down now. Add to that, how it was starting to look because of all the medication I was taking, which became tied in the vicious circle of adding hate on top of hate of how it was letting me down because I couldn’t exercise to help keep it in check. Regardless of the fact that I knew that those tablets would have messed up the body of someone as disciplined as Cindy Crawford too. Showing my age….
But no one said anything to me, and it’s unlikely anyone noticed that much; the person saying all the really bad things to me was me.
Compare and despair is volatile. I’d see all these healthy people around me, doing what they wanted when they wanted, no major cares in the world, and I’d compare myself to them and my inner mean girl would get even worse.
Your inner mean girl has the power because you’ve handed it over to her.
Do you have evidence of that?
One of my absolute favourite questions to ask my clients is do you have evidence of that? Did I have evidence that those people I was comparing myself really had it easy? Hell no. Not least because if I wasn’t talking about what I was going through, what makes me so sure that they would be!
Your partner thinking you look fat in that dress. Have they ever actually said it? If not – you have no evidence of it. And just because they’ve not complimented you wearing it does not mean that they think you’re fat.
People thinking you’re an incompetent mother. Has anyone ever told you that? If not, you have no evidence of it.
See where I’m going here?
Honest redirect
The trick to getting rid of her isn’t to shut her up, it’s to walk off and leave her without getting annoyed, frustrated or to believe them. Yes, I know she’s loud, and yes, she tends to follow, but she starts to give up when she realises she’s not getting anywhere. If a colleague said it to you, would you accept it? Tell her thanks for her opinion, but it’s not welcome today. Think of a time when you’ve been successful before and remind her (and you) that actually you’ve done it before and kicked butt. Pay attention long enough to see if you can recognise if it’s someone else’s voice that you’re hearing, and move on. Changing self-talk takes time, and that’s ok. It crept up on us over a period of time, so it’s going to take work and our attention to squash it down.
And be honest. If your partner didn’t compliment you on a new dress, could it be because when they’ve tried in the past you have berated them and/or called them a liar because you didn’t believe it so decided to invalidate them and their opinion instead and so they now prefer to keep their mouth shut.
Until you can tell yourself that you look good, that you’re a good mother/person, that you can run a marathon, you won’t believe it when others tell you. Like confidence and motivation it takes practice.
You won’t believe something new if you refuse to think something new
It’s just one simple step. Each time you catch yourself with a negative thought about yourself, think the opposite. When I was sick and I thought my body was letting me down, I asked myself “what if the opposite were true?” What if my body wasn’t letting me down, what if it had actually done an amazing job at what it was capable of at the time?
By the average marathon time, I’m a very slow marathoner. I could let my inner mean girl get away with the comments she makes about being useless, what’s the point, it’s such an embarrassment. Or, I could shut her up and tell her otherwise: that against the odds, I have completed two marathons, there were plenty of people who finished behind me, and it’s still less than 2% of the world’s population that have run one.
So, stop negative thoughts in their tracks. Combine the three tricks above to start shutting her up. Learning to love what my body can do for me has helped accept what its limitations are and work around them when needed. Pursue your dreams, regardless of what’s going on in your mind. Don’t rely on others to make you feel good. Go ahead and make yourself feel that way.
It’s not always going to be easy, but you are worth it, and you get to choose.
Wanting a guilt-free festive season this year? Sign up here for my quick and easy wins over five days designed to get you feeling confident that you’ll have a good time no matter what happens, starting on 14 December.
