STOP TALKING SMACK ABOUT YOURSELF

I used to be the queen of making negative comments about myself. Kind of a weird thing given I’d been coaching other people to stop doing that for years. 

But you don’t always realize what you are saying to yourself until someone else you are living with hears you and addresses it.

There I was standing in front of my full-length mirror after getting dressed, smoothing out my hips attempting to straighten the curves I’d been born with and had never been proud of. My then husband caught me doing this one day and asked me what I was doing.

“I just wish my thighs were smaller and my hips weren’t so big,” I whined.

“First, women are supposed to be curvy,” he said, second, stop talking smack about my best friend Jen.” His reply stopped me dead in my tracks. No one had ever said that, in that way to me before.  

Whether it is complaining about the way we look, calling ourselves stupid or silly, or comparing ourselves to someone else and coming up short – we are all guilty of this behavior. We all know negative self-talk is not “good,” so why do we keep doing it?

What we say to ourselves we’d never dare to say to a good friend.  If we did have something to say to a friend we’d say it in a gentle and compassionate manner that was constructive, even if it was something difficult to address.

So why are we not more compassionate with ourselves? I think it is for the same reason it is so difficult to keep a promise to ourselves. No one is watching. No one is listening.  No one is witnessing our behavior.

But I want to assure you that someone is.  

You are watching, you are listening, you are witnessing your own behavior. That’s a problem. You are the most important person in your life because you are the one who is here on this planet, in this lifetime, at this point in history to make the difference you came to make.

Every time you criticize yourself you are chipping away at your own magic. Don’t discredit the phenomenal human being that you are. You don’t deserve that. The rest of the planet doesn’t deserve that. We need all of your awesomeness!

So, next time you catch yourself making those negative comments, tell yourself: “Quit talking smack about my best friend (FILL IN YOUR NAME). Instead, love yourself by complimenting yourself and telling yourself what a great job you are doing – even if you don’t believe it right away. You do that often enough and you’ll start to interrupt old patterns by replacing a bad habit with a good one.

If you want some coaching on how to implement this process or you are facing any other challenge, please take a minute and sign up for one of my free 30-minute coaching calls I call “Discovery Calls.” I’ve scheduled some extra time between now and the end of the year because I know the holidays can be a bit rough.

Please also join me on for a free webinar on December 20th about how to close out the year powerfully.

Jen is a life coach, author and comedian.