If someone walked up to you in the street and insulted you, what would you do? I’m sure most of us would get pretty angry, right? So why is it that we let ourselves, talk to ourselves, like crap on a daily basis, and do nothing absolutely about it. Sometimes we have to accept that what we’re thinking, or what our heads are telling is not correct.
For some reason just because thoughts come from our own heads, we deem them to be correct. I can stand in front of a mirror and my brain can tell me that I’m fat, and I’ll believe it. But why? Why am I allowed to be an asshole to myself?
Last year I attended CBT, which whilst being painfully awkward, actually taught me one pretty clever thing, how to overcome negative thoughts, or at least to an extent. The idea is to try to constantly question negative thoughts.
Low self esteem and self worth can effect all aspects of our lives, our relationships, our work life and of course our training. If you’re going into the gym expecting to pull a PB feeling, mentally, like crap, it’s probably not going to happen. Megsquats put it pretty well in her Youtube video about wearing makeup to the gym.
Wearing makeup makes me feel good about myself, and when I feel good about myself, I perform better. Simple really.
I’m in no way some sort of psychology expert, but I’m just going to share a few examples of how I try and challenge my own thoughts, and how it helps me.
#1. I would often get really anxious in big crowds of people, particularly girls my age, and think people were looking at me thinking how “ugly” I was. But now, I will take a look around and instead think “I’ve just looked at about 50 people and I don’t think any of them are ugly, so why would they think that about me?”.
Questioning your thoughts with factual evidence also helps a lot.
#2. When I walked down the street by myself I would feel like everybody was staring at me. But then I started to think “Why would they be staring at me? Do I stare at anyone else? Nope.” and then I’d look around and physically see that nobody actually really was staring at me. That was a fact.
#3. Just like a lot of people, I would often look in the mirror and call myself fat. But now I am able to question this with evidence, for example my clothes size. “I wear size 8 clothes, how can I be fat?” Or if I was getting ready to go out and felt self conscious in an outfit I could say “I wore this exact outfit two weeks and felt great in it, what’s different?”
Of course it’s normal to have negative thoughts from time to time, but when these thoughts are a regular occurrence and having a profound effect on your life, it can be really debilitating.
I’m more than aware there are much more important things in life than your appearance, but let’s try and tackle one thing at a time!
I hope this post was useful, if you have any questions or want to chat, feel free to send me a message on my Instagram or leave me a comment on here! Bye for now X
DIONNELIFTS 