Shattering Negative Body Image-Part 3 | The Practice of Self Love

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The third thing I did was create new habits to encourage healthy self-talk and practice self-love.

[Tweet “If we’re honest, we have dozens of lousy habits, reinforcing our negative self-image. “]

Many of these are second nature, we are nearly unaware of them. There comes a time when we must be intentional. Breaking out of our backwards thinking takes active forward motion every day. Changing habits, like removing the things that trigger us and getting better input to replace the words in our head are things I talked about in the last posts. Today I want to talk about the one person that likely attacks you the most. You.

Why is it we feel free to speak to our selves with such unkindness.

I remember my son looking at me shocked. He had been unkind to his sister. I got right on his level and looked him in the eye and said, “Don’t ever talk to my daughter like that again.” I explained that if I saw another child talk to her that way I would make sure he was not invited to come over to play with her. He was taking for granted her feelings, because of her constant proximity. He forgot how valuable she was to him because she never, ever goes away.

We do the same thing to ourselves. We start small, but when we continue to allow ourselves to engage in negative self-talk it only becomes worse. Constant negativity is draining. It causes you to do horrible things like even snapping at even small criticisms. When you have been berating yourself all day long, every negative piece of input seems like the tipping point. The great news is that our inner voice can be retrained.

We should say nice things to ourselves.

I don’t think we are taught that enough as women. When complimented smile, say thank you and feel the compliment. Yeah, we never do that. Instead we say things like: this old rag, I look so fat, I should…

You should feel good. You are allowed.

About 10 years into the process I realized that I still had some work to do. I had a terrible morning habit. Every morning I would stumble into the bathroom and proceed to remind myself of every facial blemish or fat roll while I brushed my teeth. If it were another person talking to me, I would have punched them in the mouth a long time ago, but we let ourselves get away with crap we would never let other people do to us. One day I decided I did not like how I was talking to me. (I am not schizophrenic, but I do have lots of meaningful conversations with myself. I think that is why my body and mind have finally made friends after all of these years, because they talk it out…..a lot)

I made it a rule that I had to tell myself nice things every time I greeted myself in the mirror in the morning, just like I would one of my kids.
I am a huge believer that saying “Good Morning” sets the stage for the rest of the day. In our house everyone gets a huge good morning hug, even if they forgot to brush their teeth. So, every morning, when I was alone, let’s not be crazy ok, I made sure my husband was long gone, I would look myself in the eye and say, “Good Morning beautiful.” I would not allow any other thoughts contradict that statement. I would force myself to smile at me and offer kindness. It sounds stupid, I know. I felt silly. Like a little kid sometimes I had to send me back to the mirror to “say it right.” I was like the kid that did not really want to apologize, but I did hug it out with myself. Being intentional with my inner dialog helped me break my cycle of unkind self-talk.

Many of the things we do to ourselves are out of habit. Change those habits by being intentional to change the way you speak to yourself.

We don’t intentionally berate ourselves…we just get into the habit and never stop. We come to believe we deserve to be talked to rudely because we are lumpy and fluffy with bad skin. But we keep saying it because there is nobody there to tell us to stop. If it were your best friend on the other side of the glass you would never allow yourself to be so horrid and rude. So I challenge you to stop. Force yourself to greet the “you” in the mirror, with kindness every morning. See how it changes your morning.

If you would like to read the other articles in this series follow the links here Shattering Negative Body Image Intro, Part One | Changing Our Words, Part Two | Negative Input

Take some time to look at the influences in your life and determine if you need to take a break from any of the ones mentioned in these articles. Borrow someone else’s words about you if you don’t have any kind ones for yourself. Start practicing affirming truths with self-talk using actual words of love. Out loud. I mean it.

God’s word offers so much more about who you are. I challenge you to look up some verses that speak to your heart and memorize them as a rebuttal when your mind tries to speak to you about who you are. Tape them to your bathroom mirror right next to your beautiful Good Morning smile.