Tag: your thoughts about you

More self-confidence?

~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Your thoughts about you.

How many of us want to have more self-confidence? There’s a difference between confidence and self-confidence.

Confidence comes from experience. If we’ve done something well before, when we do that thing again, we’ll likely have confidence that we can do it. The thought might be, “I’ve done this before and I can do it this time.”

Self-confidence comes from within. Even if we haven’t done something before, our thoughts about ourselves and our abilities can create self-confidence that we can figure something out. Or if we can’t figure it out, we’ll see it as a learning process, and we won’t beat ourselves up for that. 

Self-confidence comes from having our own back and what we’ll tell ourselves when something doesn’t go the way we thought it would. The thought might be, “I tried my best, I learned what didn’t work, and I’ll try it again to see what might work differently. I know I can figure it out.” 

Confidence and self-confidence are feelings. Our thoughts create our feelings. So if we want to feel confident and self-confident, we’ll need to think thoughts that create those feelings.

Many of us struggle with self-confidence because we’re used to telling ourselves mean and critical things when we think we’ve “messed up” somehow. Thoughts like:

  • “I’m just not good enough for this.”
  • “There must be something wrong with me.”
  • “Nothing ever goes the way I want it to, so why keep trying?”
  • “This is too hard for me.”
  • “They think I’m incapable.”

Those thoughts will create a feeling of disappointment, self-doubt, discouragement, or defeat. Are those feelings close to the confidence or self-confidence we want to feel? No. So let’s try different thoughts. Thoughts like:

  • “I’m figuring this out and I can keep trying.”
  • “I’m learning what works and what doesn’t.”
  • “It didn’t go the way I wanted it to this time, but let’s see if this other way works . . .”
  • “This is hard and I can do hard things.”
  • “I’m as capable as I need to be.”
  • “I’m deciding to believe in myself no matter what.”

When we become aware of the thoughts we think about ourselves, we can choose them on purpose. We can choose thoughts that serve us, that are kinder to ourselves than the ones we might be used to thinking. 

Your turn: Are you aware of the thoughts you think about yourself? What thoughts about yourself serve you? Which ones don’t? What are some slightly kinder thoughts you could choose instead? What are some much kinder–and still believable thoughts–you can choose instead?

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What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

Your thoughts about you

~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Room for kindness.

I’d like to remind us that our longest relationship is the one we have with ourselves. 

What if that relationship were loving, supportive, and kind? What if we knew that we’d always have our own back no matter what?

What would our lives look like then?

To see the difference, we have to look at what our lives look like now, with what we’re currently thinking about ourselves and telling ourselves about ourselves.

What this might look like are thoughts that judge, criticize, or put ourselves down.

In the below examples, it might sound like we’re saying these things to other people, but we’d rarely tell people we care about some of the things we’re so used to telling ourselves:

  • I can’t believe you did that again–so stupid!
  • You don’t know what you’re doing, as usual.
  • Why is this so hard for you?
  • You don’t deserve to have that.
  • This shows you’re not good enough to be chosen.
  • You’re not going to do it anyway, so just don’t even try.
  • Who do you think you are?
  • You’ll never get there.

It’s not surprising then, when we don’t do what we say we want to do for ourselves with this judge always beating us up or berating us along the way. 

Sometimes we’re so used to hearing this judge that we don’t know it’s there or even saying mean things to us. We just take it as “normal.”

When we become more aware of what we’re telling ourselves and how we’re thinking about ourselves, we can start changing the story and narrative. 

We can start being more supportive and kind to ourselves.

We can start believing in what’s possible for us. We can start believing new things about ourselves. We can start believing in ourselves. 

Your turn: Are you open to becoming aware of the thoughts you’re currently thinking about yourself? What is the narrative you’re telling yourself? Why are you choosing to think those thoughts or hold those beliefs about yourself? How can you incorporate more kindness and compassion in your thoughts about you? How would this change your relationship with yourself?

Feeling challenged by replacing your current thoughts with new, more supportive, and empowering thoughts? Sign up for an exploratory session here.

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help you create a more meaningful life in which you start committing to yourself and show up the way you want? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 45-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

Why are you being so mean (to yourself)?

~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

We can be so judgy.

Do you notice the thoughts you tell yourself? Especially when things don’t go the way you want them to? In a situation with your friend, where things don’t turn out the way they wanted, you’d likely be supportive. You might say, “There’s something better out there for you,” or “You’re so great, you’ll find another opportunity in no time,” or “You learned a lot from this to take to the next experience,” or “I’m so sorry you’re disappointed. How can I support you?”

In these situations with yourself when things don’t turn out the way you want, what are the words you say to yourself? What do you make that situation mean about you?

It can be easy to beat ourselves up after a perceived failure. Instead of focusing on the facts of what happened or what we learned from the experience, we tend to make what happened mean something about ourselves. This can look like thinking to yourself, “I knew I wasn’t good enough,” or “What’s wrong with me? There’s got to be something wrong with me,” or “I’ll never get it right–I’m such a failure,” or “I shouldn’t be feeling like this. Get over it!”

The words we say to ourselves can be pretty mean. So not only have we “failed” at the thing we wanted, we then proceed to beat ourselves up for it–and feel even worse. And we’re likely the only ones telling ourselves these mean things and making ourselves feel terrible about it.

Then we start to hide, play it safe, and protect ourselves from “failing” again. So we don’t even attempt to go after what we want. But we’re only trying to avoid the words we say to ourselves, which create feelings of defeat, disappointment, hurt, and shame.

If we think we’re trying to avoid the judgment of others, in reality, we can’t control what they think about us. Even if we “succeeded” at something, there are still some people who will judge us for succeeding as much as they might judge us for failing. (And are you sure you want those people in your life?)

So if we’re not really avoiding the judgment of others, whose judgment are we trying to avoid? It could be the mean thoughts we’re used to telling ourselves.

Once we’re aware of what we say to ourselves, we have the power to change what we say and choose to be kinder to ourselves.

Your turn: What if there’s no such thing as failing, only winning or learning? How would you talk to yourself then? What thoughts about yourself could you have that are a little kinder? What if you talked to yourself and supported yourself the way you’d support a friend or even a kid-version of yourself who’s learning something new? What would you say to yourself then? And how would your relationship with yourself change?

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Work with me: Want to create a more meaningful life in which you get to show up the way you want, be fully present, and engage purposefully? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.