Stop Beating Yourself Up

This is a topic I am passionate about. I make a lot of promises in this episode. Tune in as I share 3 ways you can go from hating yourself to loving yourself.

-Watch your self-talk

-100 things List

-One-minute mirror exercise

FEATURED ON THE SHOW

Transcript:

I’m Rachael Collins at the Joyful You Podcast; this is episode 63: Stop Beating Yourself Up!

Welcome to The Joyful You Podcast. On this show I talk all about living a joyful life on purpose so you can be live well, feel well, and become your strongest, healthiest, happiest, most amazing self. Let’s do this.

This past week, I had privilege of speaking to a group of amazing women. The topic I was asked to speak on was self-care. When I say self-care, most of us think of getting our nails done, taking a long soak in the tub, getting our hair done, maybe a massage. All of those things are self-care and are great!!

What I want to share today is an area of self-care that we often don’t think about and that is our self-talk. How you talk to yourself is huge!!! Because depending on what you say, it can be caring or it can be demeaning and actually cause harm. So today I want to talk about how to stop beating yourself up.

We as women tend to be very good at this. We can be super nice and kind and caring and loving towards others but when it comes to ourselves, we’re our own worst critic.

This reminds me of the Demi Lovato song I Love Me.

We can’t see what we are, we just see what we’re not. And we’re a black belt when we’re beating up on ourselves, but we’re an expert at giving love to somebody else. We have all these hater voices that live in our head that make up our entourage. We compare ourselves to everyone and we always fall short and then we’re mean to ourselves. We punish ourselves by dieting, we shame ourselves, we tell ourselves we’re fat and ugly and we’re a bad mom.

Have you ever stopped to think about why we do this to ourselves? Most of us wouldn’t say these things to anyone else, but for some reason, myself included in this, we think it’s okay to say these things since it’s just to ourselves. I think we think the more we degrade ourselves and think and say hateful hurtful things about us, how we look and what we do, the more compliant or motivated we will be to change.

Just in case you don’t already know, it doesn’t work! And I’m speaking from experience here. I had a blackbelt in beating up on myself. I was an expert.

Here’s the deal, you can’t hate yourself into being better. You can’t hate yourself thin. You can’t hate yourself in to being a better mom. Tearing ourselves down, hating our body, and shaming ourselves will not work.

I think we know this, but for some reason we still do it. We’re like: maybe if I get mad at myself one more time, I will finally listen to myself. Nope! It didn’t work and it will NEVER work!!!

If you want to achieve your goals, you have to do it through loving yourself. Like I mentioned last week, love never fails. It’s the language of change.

I also did a 5-part series on self-love and why the reason it’s so hard for us to love ourselves and our life is because our brain isn’t naturally wired to do that. We have to retrain it. I’ll add a link in the show notes if you’re interested in watching it.

Going on 7 years ago I was 50 pounds heavier and unable to lose the weight. I tried using the shame-approach. I told myself I was fat and overweight. I told myself I was ugly. I told myself something was wrong with me, that I wasn’t enough. I think I thought if I punished myself and made myself feel bad enough, I finally get fed up enough and change. I did this over and over again and it never EVER worked! It just made me feel worse about myself, which made me run to the kitchen to soothe and comfort myself from myself.

I would here people refer to self-love but I thought that was something that happened once I lost all the weight. I couldn’t fathom loving myself while I was still out of shape, fat, ugly, still yelling at my kids, still not being perfect. Once I got all of that together, then I will. I used to believe once I weighed a certain number on the scale, I’d magically be a better person. That somehow everything I hated about myself would be gone and I’d be this awesome amazing perfect person that everybody including myself loved. Well guess what. I starved and punished myself down to that weight, and yes, I looked different on the outside, but I was still the same old me on the inside. And I still didn’t like myself. So then what did I do, I kept moving the goal post. Maybe if you lose 5 more pounds then you’ll like yourself. Nope, still didn’t work.

I have a favorite quote from Dr. Martin Luther King. He says: “Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” Hate can never equal love. Hate just breeds more hate.

I finally realized that hating myself wasn’t working and I just felt bad all of the time!!! I decided it was time to learn how to truly love and believe in myself, weight, flaws, and all. It wasn’t until I was able to get to a place of respect for myself and then love, that I was able to end the weight struggle once and for all. It has been years now, and my weight has stayed the same.

Listen- some of you may be skeptical, but I promise you, if you want permanent results, if you want to change habits, you have to do it through love. You have to unconditionally love and appreciate yourself right now. In the body you’re in, at the weight you’re at, with the habits you have. When you get to this place, you will automatically want to change, not because you hate how you are, but because you love how you are and you want to kind and take care of yourself mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually, and you want to just keep be a little bit better day by day. Not because you then you’ll finally be enough but because you already are enough.

So, today I want to give you three tools you can use to stop beating up on yourself so you can get to a place of liking and then loving yourself. Ready?

The first tool is to WATCH YOUR SELF-TALK. Be aware of what you say to yourself and what you think about yourself. Is it kind? If it’s not, stop yourself and either flip the script or just don’t say anything at all.

Imagine you’re single and you’re going out on a date. The guy or girl, for my male friends, picks you up and the first thing they say it, “You’re looking frumpy. Why did you choose that outfit? I told you, you shouldn’t have had that donut yesterday.”

You get in the car and you begin to talk and he says, “I can’t believe you actually said that! Wow! You’re stupid. Oh my gosh! Look at how big your thighs look. They take up the entire seat.”

You get to the restaurant and you tell him about your kids. And he tells you “You suck as a mom. Why can’t you just stop yelling at them? Why didn’t you make them feel loved? What is wrong with you? You’ve ruined their lives. They must hate you.”

Tell me. Would you go out with the person again? Heck NO!! Yet, this is us. We say these things to ourselves and don’t think twice about them. We speak to ourselves and degrade ourselves like this all of the time.

There is a YouTube video, I think I’ve mentioned it before on here, but it’s a video of two best friends and the producer has them write down all the things they hate about themselves. Then the producer has them say those things as if they were saying them about their best friend. It is powerful! If you haven’t watched it, you need to and if you have, go watch it again. It will change you. I’ll link to it in the show notes.

What you say to yourself, just like we talked about last week, matters!

Another activity I do often, especially when I’m feeling super down on myself, is I make a list of 100 things I love about myself. For some of you this will be really challenging, but I promise, the change you’ll see when you focus on your strengths instead of your shortcomings is miraculous.

On this list you can write down your talents. Maybe you play an instrument or sing. Maybe you’re really good at painting. Maybe you’re good at dancing or sports. Maybe photography is your thing. Maybe you’re an awesome baker or maybe you’re great at making toast or flipping pancakes. Everything counts! Maybe you’re good at painting fingernails or decorating your house. Maybe you’re always able to spot a good deal. All of these are talents. Don’t discount them. They’re what make you YOU.

You may want to include the parts of your body you like. For me, I think I have really nice calves, so I always write that down. I also like my freckles. For you, maybe you have really great hair, or pretty eyes, or long eyelashes that you love. Whatever you like about yourself.

You can also list things you do well or things you’ve accomplished. I love that I’m a good listener. I love that I get up and shower every day. These do not have to be newsworthy things.

I find it helpful to think of the things I would miss if I were to suddenly lose them. I think of Stephanie Nielsen who was burned in an airplane crash. Not only did her body change drastically but her ability to do things like make lunch for her kids and type on a keyboard were also lost for a time. What do you love about yourself that you would you miss if this happened to you? Write these things down. I would love if you would make your list, take a picture of it and share it on social media. Don’t forget to tag me so I can see it @ajoyfulyou.

Imagine how things would be different if we celebrate ourselves more.

The third and final tool is what I call MIRROR WORK. I bet some of you just had flashbacks of Stuart Smalley from the old Saturday Night Live shows. This is not quite it.

Here’s how it works. Every day, pick a time to stand in front of a mirror. I find that habit stacking works really good for this. Meaning if you have a habit of brushing your teeth in the morning or washing your face at night in front of a mirror, stack Mirror Work on top of that habit.

Then you want to look yourself in the eye and tell yourself 3 things:

Tell yourself thank you for something you did that day or if it’s in the morning, the previous day.
Give yourself a compliment.
End by telling yourself, “I love you, _______(state your name)____”

Here’s what this might look like. You just finished brushing your teeth and you’re standing in front of the mirror looking at yourself in the eye, and you say:

“Hey there girl! Thank you for getting up with the baby last night. I really appreciate you. You’re an amazing mother. I can tell you really love your kids. You’re doing a fabulous job. I love you, Rachael.”

Or maybe it sounds more like this:

“Hey sis! I really appreciate that you went for a walk yesterday. My body feels so good when we move it. I can tell you’re really committed to us and making us healthy and it’s working. Way to go! I love you so much Rachael.

This exercise is so easy to do. It takes less than 1 minute. But just like everything that’s easy to do, it’s also easy not to do. Some think it’s dumb, others think it won’t work. Others have a hard time looking at themselves and speaking kindly to themselves. I promise you that if you will take baby steps to use this tool every day or as often as you can, you will stop beating yourself up and your relationship with yourself will change, your relationship with others and with food and with your body will change, and your life will change.

I would love to know your experience with trying all or any of these tools. Please feel free to reach out to me on social media or email. I love hearing from you. Also- if you liked this episode, please share it. And remember, choose joy because happiness isn’t enough.

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