Priorities: Being Kinder to Myself

It is human nature to be our worst critics but I think because we believe it is part of our nature we’ve accepted that it is OK to not be kind to ourselves. At least, I had. It was just last year that I began to truly be kinder to myself. 2016 and most of 2017 were the worst years for my self esteem and after a full year of just beating myself up, I decided that 2018 was the year that I would not allow me to break me down.

It isn’t easy to change bad habits but there were a few things that I decided that I would change to make it easier to speak truth and good to myself. Because the thing is that the way you speak to yourself matters.

You won’t automatically become kind to yourself in a day so for every bad thought I would think about myself, I had to tell myself (out loud) two good things about myself. Saying things out loud made things real to me. And with me telling myself two good things, I felt like the bad thing was essentially crossed off. It was almost like getting two things for the price of one. And soon enough, (although not really soon enough) the good was overshadowing the bad.

I began to ask myself, would I talk to my sisters or my girlfriends this way? The answer was always no. I always talk to my sisters and girlfriends with kindness even when I’m being brutally honest about something. So, why was it so hard to do the same with myself? Every time a negative thought would creep in I would ask myself, would you say this to a friend? And if you did, how would that make them feel? How is this making you feel?

The next thing I started doing was asking myself, why am I thinking this? Is there any truth to what I’m telling myself? A lot of the times the answer was actually no.

I use to stare at myself in the mirror and critique everything I thought was wrong with myself. And I find that this was the hardest to do but then I had to start telling myself everything I thought was right with myself. And in the end, it was never a vanity thing. In fact it would be something like, your eyes are just fine because you can see all the beauty in the world. Your belly is just fine, you get to enjoy all your favorite foods. Your arms are just fine, you get to hug all your niece and nephews. Your legs are just fine, you get to travel and walk around new places. And basically that’s how I turned a negative game into a positive one. Lately, I find myself admiring myself and it’s such a good feeling. I feel like I walk with more confidence and don’t want to hide anymore. This talking good to myself was actually working. But I had to be consistent. Something that I knew needed fixing and something that I wanted to fix.

There is no easy fix when it comes to loving ourselves. It takes time and consistency to undo bad habits. But when I finally saw the damage that I was doing to myself and that my feelings of anxiousness was because of my thoughts, I knew I had to start somewhere. I’m not sure why it took me a while to realize that I control my thoughts. I was the one who allowed them to seep in whether they were true or not. It was realizing that I could counter the bad thoughts with good thoughts. I’m not 100% there yet ... but I can feel myself getting there and that to me makes a world of difference.