You Are What You Speak

Have you ever heard the saying, “You are what you eat?” It basically means if you eat healthily, you are healthy. And, vice versa. (Apparently, it dates back to 1826 when a French lawyer wrote ‘Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you what you are.’ The phrase continued to evolve until the 1930s when a nutritionist coined the exact phrase.)   

This phrase (you are what you eat) is basically the entire premise of the beliefs work I do with high-performing women. The same principles apply. In fact, I’m known for saying, “You are what you speak.” 

You know how I came to learn that? The hard way (read: life experience.) It took other people pointing out the way I was speaking about myself for me to even be able to hear it and then catch myself doing it. Perfect example, there was a day I was standing in front of the mirror smoothing out my hips and my then husband caught me and asked me what I was doing. 

I whined about wishing my thighs and hips were smaller. You know his reply? “Quit talking smack about my best friend, Jen.” One sentence and my perspective completely shifted. He was right.

I would never treat my best friend the way I treated myself. I would never stand for my best friend believing the things she said about herself. I would never allow smack talk about someone I loved. So it became time to throw a little more love in my own direction and figure out what else was I saying out loud about myself, internalizing, and therefore believing. And how was it impacting myself and those around me? 

I encourage anyone reading this post to ask themselves the same questions because we all have negative or inaccurate self-beliefs that aren’t doing us any favors but we think are Truths. I use Truths with a capital T for a reason..

Our "Truths" are simply beliefs we think are real. For example, when you say things like 'I just procrastinate,' or ‘I’m shy,’ or ‘I’m introverted’, or ‘I’m awkward’ you think it is the "Truth" about you. Except, you didn’t come out of the womb that way. Have you ever seen a shy baby? They scream their heads off to get what they want. That baby may become shy, but only as a learned response to its environment. All of your "Truths" are the same, but you don’t realize they’ve been learned. You’ve held these beliefs so long that they seem actual and definitive. It would serve us well to be able to call them out and see how they help or hurt us. Not unlike choosing the right foods.  

When I work with clients, my aim is to get them to a place of total self-awareness. I want them to find their due north and to become their authentic self. I have an entire success alignment triangle that I work through that has six tiers and the whole aim is for total world domination. 

Kidding. (Kind of…) 

The real objective is to unlock my client’s limitless power in leadership (and life) by knowing themselves intimately and becoming their truest form of Self. I want them to become bold leaders in their professions and in life and to celebrate their brilliance. More than that, I want them to fall back in love with themselves, embrace their genius and own their success. We begin with values – as this is the foundational layer that everything rests on – and then move up a tier to beliefs. The nuts and bolts of the whole thing are that values influence our beliefs. Beliefs influence our actions. Actions get us results. 

What’s a belief? Simply stated, beliefs are a feeling of certainty around what something means. Like values, our beliefs motivate us and impact our results. We collect them over time, usually subconsciously, from the influences in our life (family, friends, society, etc.) and from our experiences. Beliefs can come from interpreting an event at a specific point in time as much as they can be handed down like a used pair of jeans from our loved ones. This is when they become Truths. 

The thing about beliefs is that they are like food (see, I’m bringing us back around). There are two groups really when you think about it: healthy foods and junk food. There are beliefs that give us strength and I call those empowering beliefs; these are the healthy foods of beliefs. And there are beliefs that bring us down and hold us back that are disempowering beliefs; these are the junk food of beliefs. 

What I have observed in over twenty years of coaching is that most people are feeding off the junk. They are carrying around disempowering beliefs that sabotage their success every day. They are what they eat. And they don’t even know it.  

It’s easy for this to happen. Remember I said that usually our beliefs are formed subconsciously? Beliefs have these quiet ways of being formed through defining moments. A defining moment is some important past event (usually when we are a kid). The moment doesn’t have to be great or intense, but it is significant in some way to us as a child. We attribute some kind of meaning to that moment which turns into a lifelong belief we carry around with us like a monkey on our back.

For example, Susan’s mom was very angry with her when she was six. Her mom told her she was stupid one time. Even though her mother didn’t mean it (and I bet seriously regretted it as soon as it left her mouth), Susan formed the belief that she would never be enough for her mother. Susan’s belief that she was not enough for her mother transferred into believing she was not enough generally. This tightly held belief impacted her decisions about whether she went after promotions or other new opportunities which, of course, impacted her actions and results. Probably, Susan looked at herself in the mirror and never saw someone who was enough and/or would say things like, “I don’t have what it takes to (fill in the blank),” which she believed. 

Once we’ve formed a belief from a defining moment, we tend to hold on to it and search for evidence that strengthens it. You can see then when a belief is a disempowering one and we feed it continuously, it becomes ingrained. We don’t even realize how big it’s gotten or how it’s guiding our life. 

On the flip side, when we have a defining moment that turns into an empowering belief, it offers us strength from the outset. We continue to feed that belief and over time (years, in fact) we build up incredible evidence of the amazing thing we believe. Instead of it being the monkey on our back, it’s like the latest Louis Vuitton backpack.

For example, Julie was told she was a great artist by a teacher in the second grade. Julie believed from that moment on she was artistic. Her belief in her artistic ability guided her decisions to pursue creative endeavors. These decisions led her to take meaningful actions toward her desires and pushed her closer to the results she wanted. Julie may have looked in the mirror always seeing the creator within and saying, “Today I’ll make amazing art,” which she believed. 

The good news is you can let go of disempowering beliefs just like you switch from bingeing junk food to making healthier snack choices. If you want to. The choice is yours. If we take in empowering beliefs, we will feel empowered. If we take in disempowering beliefs, we will feel disempowered.

We cannot change the past but we can change our interpretation of the past. We can reshape our beliefs to serve, support, nurture, and challenge us. We are what we eat; we are what we believe. But always, always, the choice is ours. No one is forcing us to consume that which doesn’t serve us. We get to decide. 

Here’s the rub. This work isn’t easy. The principles may be easy to understand, but changing that neuro linguistic programming that’s been happening for years ain’t. The overt negative self-talk (“My hips are too big.” “I can’t go after that promotion.” “There’s no way I’ll get that job.” “Even my cat doesn’t want to sleep with me.”) can be easy to identify, but what about all the other things you’re saying out loud that you don’t even realize you are because you’re so accustomed to your own negative self-talk? 

Calling out the covert negative self-talk requires an outside force. An external reflector who can call you on your B.S. (belief system or bull shit, you can use either.) Sure, that girlfriend (or boyfriend) who always tells you like it is is a good place to start, and it’s nice they’ll call you on it, but if you want to truly shift the way you see and speak about yourself, you need professional help and I’m not talking about Dr. Phil. You need a coach. I happen to know one. 

You are what you speak. Are you ready to lighten the smackdown and increase the self-love? Because I’m one phone call away and I’m ready to tell you, “Don’t talk smack about my best friend [Insert your name here].” 

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To discover your authentic self with a coach who can provide guidance, support, and a swift kick in the pants, consider joining my Unleash Your Legacy cohort or consider registering for my next Empower Hour.

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