The battle within
Ever heard of the saying 'we are our own worst enemies'?
Quite true isn't it. How many times do you talk to yourself in a way that you would never speak to a friend or family member...
How many times do you call yourself hopeless, a failure, a bad parent etc. I sure as hell have a lot of negative self talk - I'm only human.
I was having a chat with a client about battling against ourselves just today. We seem to be constantly battling with ourselves in our own heads, saying we can't do it, we aren't doing enough, we should be doing better, we aren't there yet, we should be doing more. The list goes on! We are very self critical creatures.
The battle in our heads often stems from comparison to others. We compare our progress or lack thereof to others and even ourselves to years gone by. These days those 'others' are everywhere - it only takes a minute on instagram for anyone to feel like shit about themselves and I reckon you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who wasn't in some way negatively impacted by social media.
So how do you overcome this battle with yourself? Awareness is the first step - actually noticing that you're having a negative thought about yourself is the key. Some of these thoughts may be so automatic you may not even notice them. Start listening to your mind chatter.
Once you are aware of these thoughts you can start to define and challenge these criticisms. For example if you say to yourself - 'I'm such a failure, I've never been able to complete anything in my life' - start by first defining what failure actually means. Does failing mean you didn't even try, didn't get the highest mark on an exam, lost weight once before but put it all back on again? Once you've defined the term then look at the evidence for what you've said. In my example before - 'never been able to complete anything in my life' - is a BS over-exaggeration. I'd say everyone has completed some level of schooling. Maybe you completed a short course. Maybe you completed a 5km runs years ago. That's still completed.
I believe that done is better than perfect - I mean with most things - I wouldn't want a surgeon to have just 'done' an appendix removal - I'd be hoping it was perfect. But for most other stuff, perfection can be the enemy of progress. How many times have you not started exercising because you felt too unfit, too overweight, too tired, too busy? Well I'm here to tell you that the perfect conditions aren't ever going to present themselves for you to make a start, so just get going.
Start changing your self talk - for example you might say to yourself - Yep, I feel really unfit and overweight at the moment and going to the gym will probably make me feel uncomfortable but if I don't make a start now, it's only going to get worse. Acknowledge where you are at in a non-judgemental way and then start moving in the direction toward your goal. Progress over perfection. Build the habits, enjoy the journey and stop listening to all that negative self talk in your head.
