Whatchu Sayin’

Summer has been good and we’re getting ready to start another school year, cue tears. Something that summer brings is insecurities and self deprecating thoughts. I often forget how powerful our words are. They really can breath life or perpetuate death. So what about the words I speak to myself?It’s funny how we can look at people from the outside and automatically make assumptions about them as people. We often describe people by their looks. The heavy set person, the blonde, the thin, ect. I love the body positive movement, but with that comes a bunch of other adjectives, thick, curvy, chubby sexy, ect. But what if we described people by their character, the kind, the generous, the funny, the sweet natured, polite, radiant, ect. This summer Zoë has struggled with the word FAT. She thought about it and it would eat her up inside, giving her a tummy ache before she would eventually confess. The innocent part of it all is that she was thinking about how fat a baby was. Who doesn’t love a little butterball baby. She caught me off guard with all these thoughts about the word fat. At first I told her to ignore the thought (just get rid of it), but then I got thinking, is that what I do? Then I had to question my own thoughts around the word fat and I realized how when she was in kindergarten I made her skip that word on her worksheet. I didn’t want that word to be apart of her vocabulary. Why? My own insecurities and negative perception of that word was being exposed. Now I have to deal with this. So I begin to process it.

Generally speaking I always thought of myself as a positive person. But I’m not. My knee jerk reaction is to be negative. I often times think people do things in a negative way, maybe not to hurt me, but to offend me. I’m offendable. I really didn’t think I was, but I’m slowly learning my thought process and perception is riddled with negativity. Lately I have been finding myself sensitive to how I feel when I’m surfing the inter web. Not necessarily in comparison as I’m not good enough, but look at her confidence. She’s bigger than me and she flaunts it. Why can’t I just love myself?? Why does the thought of fat make me cringe. Fat doesn’t have to be negative, it doesn’t have to be bad. I don’t want Zoë to struggle with the perception of fat, let alone the very thought of the word. So I guess maybe body positivity isn’t so much wrapped up in the words, but your thoughts about the words.

Confidence what does that look like? I was chatting with my sister about our words and tone. We talked about intentionality. Sometimes we’re so unintentional with our words and probably our thoughts and I’ll throw in emotions too. We let them dictate and navigate our lives, but never once do we stop ourselves and think why? Or even question is that the truth? So we go around thinking that persons got it all together, but what we don’t realize is that person sat in front of the mirror inspecting every single insecurity and flaw they have before the day even started. How is that possible? The very person we think is so confident is so insecure. And I’m talking how is it possible for those two very thoughts to occur about the same person. One person perceives confidence and the other insecurity. Sometimes I can be feeling real confident and then it just takes one person to point out a flaw and deep inside I’m reminded of all of my insecurities. I want to have it all together, but sometimes it’s more comforting to admit I don’t, but there’s so much danger in that too for me. It can keep me in that place of giving up. And that’s were I land in the pattern of negative thoughts.

So I’ve decided to stop the cycle or at least interrupt it. When I think negatively I tell myself how can you see it positively. I know that to change a pattern of behavior it has to be replaced with a new behavior otherwise nothing will change. So cue new language, new thoughts, new emotions about the very same situation (mostly when I’m working out). I’m trying to retrain my brain to desire working out. To not let my negative thoughts or experiences to cause me to quit. So I write. I write here to make a new commitment. I write on the walls of my garage when I’m in the moment. So far I have written, “I feel like puking, but you didn’t.” “I can’t, you did!” “Feel your lungs expand and contract, you’re alive” I’m filling my classroom with motivational sayings. I’m going to give myself and others the language we so badly need to combat the world of negativity.