Sunday, November 27, 2016

Are You Sabotaging Your Success?

Years ago I read a book that changed who I am. It was a book about how our own "self talk" makes us succeed or fail in many ways. The book taught me to examine what I was saying in my own head to be unsuccessful. In my case in my young adult life at the time I had very low self esteem and experienced panic attacks in groups. The book told me to pay attention to what I was telling myself at those times and to write it down. I began to see a pattern of how I told myself how worthless and unimportant I was. I even thought that people were laughing about me. I mean how silly to think that anyone was that concerned about ME!
At the time I was also probably at my highest weight and was eating to sooth myself. This was something that I didn't recognize was tied to my dislike of myself and my fear of others.
It was my self talk that affected my eating patterns. It was not just what I told myself about food, it was also what I told myself about my lack of self control. I gave myself reasons to be out of control. I told myself why I couldn't succeed.
Once I started listening to my "self talk" and writing it down I realized that I was sabotaging my own life! I was bullying myself! It is bad enough to be bullied by others but it is worse to bully yourself into failure!
I write this because it applies to "lack of self control" or "failure" in changing diet, walking away from the cake, closing the refrigerator door, putting the junk food item back on the shelf and in many more ways that we tell ourselves "why I can't do this"!
How does this apply to reversing diabetes? It applies because it is our "self talk" that makes us give up. It is our "self talk" that makes us believe that we can't do this. We tell our self that "it isn't fair", we tell our self that "I just can't give this up". We tell our self that "I have no control".
So listen to your self talk. Write it down just as you are thinking it! I bet you do not even realize what you are saying about yourself until you listen and write it down.
In the book I read called "Telling Yourself The Truth" by Author's William Backus and Marie Chapian there are chapters called "Misbelief in Self Talk", "Misbelief in Lack of Self Control" and another called "Misbelief in the Fear of Change".
There are many more misbeliefs that we tell ourselves that can make us unable to stop the cycle of bullying ourselves and making us feel that we can not succeed, but we can succeed! So get a pen and paper and start journaling what you are telling yourself. You may be very surprised to discover what your inner bully is telling you!