So on that day I had just rolled out my mat and towel when this very handsome young man started to set up right beside me.
Truth. Here were my immediate thoughts. “Oh shit. Why did he need to set up right there? Should I move? He’s so buff, bet he’s good at this. He’s going to think I’m too old to do yoga, and I can’t imagine looking like anything but a total dweeb from any angle he may be looking.”
Pretty weird, huh? The other truth for me is that I am quite clear on my wholeness and wouldn’t let someone, hot guy or not, mess that up.
But that didn’t stop my chatter. That was self-trash talk at it’s best and took all of about 5 seconds to run through my head. At one point in my life, those 5 seconds could have manufactured into a whole day in that mindset. Now I push back.
I change the thoughts and the new self talk goes roughly like this.
I tell myself to cut the shit. Then I purposefully think about why it’s not a good plan to let self-trash thoughts continue, and I hear the simple reminder that I like to share with all of my clients.
“Those words, those comments, those expectations that you put on yourself do you nothing but harm.”
Self-trash talk is not a little harmful, it’s a lot harmful. It’s something that happens to everyone in this beautiful world, and from my experience, women spend much of their lives living in it. It’s something that we need to get a handle on managing or it will manage us into a very crappy mindset.
- Self-trash talk harms us by making an experience unbearable. It’s why some women won’t engage in public gatherings like yoga. No one can see them if they stay home.
- Self-trash talk harms us because we use it as evidence that points out our perceived flaws and make them the biggest thing in the room. The absolute biggest.
- Self-trash talk harms us by encouraging us to make decisions based on the negatives we hear instead of our positives. In this particular example, I could have gone off in the direction of planning plastic surgery to sport perky boobs or a tight butt. Dodged that bullet!
- Self-trash talk harms us by catching us in the trap that compares us to other women. There is no room for rooting for another woman or supporting their efforts, they become better or worse than we are. It’s not pretty but it’s a common place for our minds to go to feel better about ourselves.
- Self-trash talk harms us by simply making us feel like shit about ourselves.
One more truth? Self-trash talk is a place to take back our power, even if just for that last reason. Who wants to feel like shit about themselves?
Change the self-trash talk. You know you own it, right? Tweet that out!
Wanna know what I did in my yoga class? I changed those trash remarks to better ones. It doesn’t need to be a book, just a statement or two, repeated as needed!
“Stop the bad, allow the good.”
“Empowering thoughts will serve me well in this moment and going forward.”
“Trash talking my body is not ok. Instead I offer myself love and acceptance.”
Then I got on with my class.
I know you’re thinking about it. Your truth.
When and where has your self-trash talk taken over your head and your mood, aka your mindset? How long did it last? How did you eventually get out of it?
And what might you have thought about instead?
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