The Impact of Negative Self - Talk

I love helping women to understand the mind-body connection including techniques to quieten the mind, tune-in to our intuition and rewrite old patterns and beliefs. I am a mother of two beautiful children who abruptly made me question who I was and what my purpose in life is. I went from being a Team Leader in a busy travel industry to doing my Graduate Diploma in Primary School teaching while having two children under 2 years old and then working as a primary school teacher and a travel agent from home because that was the ‘practical’ thing to do. 

I thought my life was supposed to be busy rushing around dropping the little ones to daycare so I can continue my stressful, busy life because this is what my parents had done. But through this journey, I discovered none of these path’s lit me up, it didn’t fulfil me or feel in alignment with who I was and my place in the world. It simply fitted the mould that I believed I needed to be in.

I then started running. I hated running but I loved the time being away from my kids… I loved the peace and quiet and the ability to think a thought from beginning to end! It doesn’t sound like much but it was my escape… which turned into my joy! I found joy in challenging myself to find comfort in the uncomfortable, to push my body to places it hadn’t been. 

After several triathlons, a half iron man, a few marathons and one ultra-marathon last year I finally realised that I had got so caught up in this and I began to understand that I was obsessed about wanting a certain body shape, appearance and image that goes with being ‘fit’ that I started to question A LOT in my life.. I started feeling guilty for grabbing that extra piece of chocolate or the extra piece of sourdough for breakfast because I didn’t “deserve it” that day … I realised that I was fanatical with the way my body looked and whether or not I had lumps on the side of my upper thighs which I HATED! I realised that I had forgotten to LOVE myself and I mean really LOVE myself.. lumps, bumps and all… 

It’s not easy to confess these things because it may seem weak or that we shouldn’t talk about things like this but I’ve realised that WAY too many mothers in particular are TOO damn critical and HARD on themselves… We have got so caught up in looking a certain way that when we don’t look this way, we don’t feel deserving of LOVE, we don’t feel comfortable in our own skin to be ourselves which then HOLDS us back from being our TRUE BEAUTIFUL AUTHENTIC selves… As mothers our bodies change, our bodies aren’t the same as what they used to be but holding onto the thoughts, emotions and energies that get stuck in our minds and in our physical bodies is TOXIC and can have a lot more harm than we realise. 

In today’s chat I wanted to look at the fundamental mind-body awareness needed to understand how the mind creates our reality and shapes our experiences, and why integrating mindbody tools which you will learn today, can assist you to be kinder to yourself and may even help to shift some of that weight or in the least bring awareness to some reasons why you don’t feel your BEST.

Do you know that we operate 95% of the time from our subconscious mind? Do you know what this means? It means that we are spending most of our lives operating through our unconscious programming, largely unaware of the thoughts and beliefs that are shaping our lives. Our unconscious mind is far more powerful than our conscious mind.

This is a bit scary, isn’t it! 

Hand ups – Who has had a thought when you look in the mirror of “Gee, look at that big floppy butt? OR Why can’t I lose this weight?” When you say things like that to yourself, how does it make you feel? Where can you feel it in the body? Maybe, your shoulders drop and you feel upset with yourself or even a bit of anger….

It’s through this mindbody connection feedback loop, that effectively, our body becomes our conditioned mind; experiencing and reliving a certain state of feeling in response to our core underlying thoughts and beliefs, and the memories we have stored that support them. So effectively, even if these thoughts aren’t true our bodymind doesn’t know the difference and stores them away as truth and how we look or feel.

When we experience these negative, unkind thoughts over and over, we create physiological changes in the body which we may not even be aware are happening like, poor digestion, negative outlook, weight gain, muscle tension and so on. Through understanding the mindbody connection feedback loop better we can make changes in our thoughts to help balance some of these biological changes which occur.

Cells are the basis of life and there are approximately 50 trillion of them in the human body. Every thought you think, intention you set, feeling you conjure and emotion you resonate is felt and experienced within every single one of these 50 trillion cells within your body

YOUR MIND CONTROLS YOUR BIOLOGY…. 

Words are powerful to the subconscious mind. As I’ve said previously, the sub-conscious mind doesn’t know the difference between reality or not, so if you tell yourself “I can’t lose weight.” Your subconscious mind makes that belief true for you….

Now that we know a bit more about how our subconscious mind works, we can understand how some of our beliefs are formed and why our self-talk may not be helping us to be the best person we can be.

When we start paying attention to our thoughts, we might start to realise just how often we are thinking negative beliefs about ourselves or our situations. When we take ownership of our self-talk we can learn to confront our inner beliefs and change the information that is no longer relevant or appropriate in our current circumstances to develop a more positive mindset.

So I’d like each of you for homework to start to CATCH/CHALLENGE/CHANGE your thoughts… particularly when it comes to your SELF TALK about your body or yourself…

Catch the thought - I hate my legs

Challenge the thought – Why am I so mean to myself?

Change the thought…. I am grateful that my legs can help me move around every day

To change a negative belief, we first must recognise that we have one. Then we need to cast it aside and create for yourself a new belief; one that is relevant and true for you now. (Catch, challenge, change)

Catch – I can never lose weight

Challenge – Is this true or just my belief?

Change – I am healthy and accept myself for who I am

New beliefs are more powerful when you can attach positive feelings to it by envisioning yourself as you want to be. How does it feel? What does it look like?

When you start changing your internal world, your outer world will respond in often surprising and pleasant ways. Imagine how you would feel if you followed the exercise program for a whole week? Or if you lost some weight? How does it feel in the body? Imagine you’ve completed a 6 week challenge and are feeling awesome, sit with this feeling and start to embody it. Visualisation is a very powerful tool to help your sub-conscious start to work for you towards your conscious goals. 

Did you know that when our hormones are out of balance from STRESS/TIREDNESS/ANXIETY/TENSION in the body that our bodies struggle to lose weight??

When our bodies are showing signs of stress, we produce the hormone cortisol which slows down our metabolism and makes it harder for our bodies to use fat as a fuel source. 

One of the first steps is to acknowledge that we are feeling a bit overwhelmed, stressed or just need a break… Give yourself some time, even if you don’t have it, to sit quietly and make yourself a cuppa and take some deep breaths… This will slow your autonomic nervous system and help to slow down and stop rushing.

If we start to become more aware of how we speak to our selves and re-wire our brains to more positive, kind thoughts consistently then we can start to shift our sub-conscious patterns into more conscious thoughts that align to your goals of fitness and better health.

Practicing positive affirmations before bed each morning is a very powerful tool. 

THE THREE TOOLS to help shift your beliefs

1)    BREATHING – helps to slow down the nervous system to dissipate the cortisol stored from stress and so much more….

2)    Catch/Challenge/Change your beliefs

3)    Visualisation and Affirmations 

I am very passionate about helping mothers to re-discover their truth and be the BEST version of the person/mother they want to be. I am here to support mothers to step out of their comfort zones and challenge them to embody the best version of themselves each and every day through nurturing and supportive ways. I am here to educate, empower, overcome and embody your full potential to be the best you can be.