Voices in Our Heads
On my ride home from work today, I heard the song “Perfect” from Pink on the radio. In that song, it talks about retraining the voice in your head. It says, “Change the voices in your head, make them like you instead.” This got me thinking back to the earlier days of my weight loss journey.
That voice inside my head used to not be very nice. I would tell myself things like, “Here we go again. Let’s do Weight Watchers for the fifth time and then be a failure again. There is no way I can lose the 100 plus pounds I have to lose!” Then, as my journey continued and I was somewhat successful I would say things to myself like, “It’s only _____ pounds. There are too many more to lose. It’s only a matter of time before I gain it back and quit.”
After losing my first 25 pounds and getting a postcard from my Weight Watcher leader, Jacynta, I started to shush those voices that were saying those things to me. After losing around 50 pounds, I started to get compliments from people saying how good I was looking. I was still heavy and had much more to lose so when they would compliment me I would say “Thank you but…” and put a negative comment in there like “I have a lot more to go” or “I’m still overweight.” Now, the voices in my head were coming out of my mouth in the form of negative self talk. One week at Weight Watchers, my leader talked about retraining our thinking. Not only do we have to stop ourselves each time we start to THINK negative things but we also have to stop ourselves when we start to SAY negative things.
I made a conscious effort from that day on to start saying positive things out loud when someone would compliment me. I started saying, “Thank you, I have worked really hard.” That was my standard statement. Then, I found out how important it was to tell people my goals (I will talk about that more specifically in a later post) so I started sharing my upcoming goal. Just this morning someone asked me how my weight loss journey was going. I said, “Good…it has slowed down lately but I am hoping to lose a total of 100 pounds by my birthday in early June.” Not only does this make me accountable to myself by verbalizing my goal, it makes me accountable to another person.
We all have it. It talks to us all the time. Good or bad, it is there. It is that little voice inside our head that says things to ourselves. What does yours say to you? Is it positive or negative? I want to challenge you today to start retraining your thinking if it is negative. You will be a success! Believe it and proclaim it!
