Did you know that your brain is wired for self-preservation? On the surface, that seems like a pretty cool thing, and in a lot of ways, it is! Unfortunately, it also means that it tends to resist anything “out of the ordinary,” even if it is something that is good for us! This is the reason that change can feel SO hard for us sometimes! The good news? We are NOT hopeless victims to the whims of our brains! And I believe that the ways in which we talk to ourselves, both consciously and unconsciously, are one of the greatest predictors of whether or not we will be successful. You see, most of us have a handful of recurring thoughts that, although they are not helping us, are things we tend to return to over and over. But once we begin to understand the thoughts that are driving our choices and what we are creating for ourselves as a result, we can begin to unravel the unhelpful patterns that are keeping us stuck!
I first learned about affirmations years ago and thought they sounded like magic. Fast forward a bit and they left me feeling frustrated, confused, and sad. SO many people seemed to have success through affirmations, but I was never one of them and I couldn’t understand why. It sucked. Fast forward again (a few years this time!) and I finally learned WHY I never saw success with my use of affirmations: I was trying TOO hard and going TOO big. You see when my default setting at the time was “I hate everything about my body,” trying to affirm that “my body is perfect just as it is” caused my brain to immediately go into accusatory mode, pointing out all the reasons I was a liar and confirming in great detail how horrible my body actually was. You see, by trying to shift my thinking too far too fast, I was causing it to backfire. Even worse, the result was that I was DOUBLING DOWN on my terrible thoughts that weren’t serving me!
Thankfully, I finally learned the art of using baby steps to help shift my thinking, and that has been a GAME-CHANGER! Want to see where your thoughts could use a tune-up and how we might baby step your path there? Let’s connect!
