If you feel that you have low self-esteem, feelings of worthlessness, and a lack of confidence, this might be your sign to take a look at how you are speaking to yourself as you experience your life – and to make a change once and for all!

Negative self talk is SO incredibly damaging to your happiness and success!

And yet we all do it. Even if you are someone like me who is hyperaware of the ongoing relationship you have with yourself, negative thoughts about oneself are possibly inevitable. We all do it, but why? 

We might do this because of environments we have lived in, stories and beliefs people have told us or spoken of us, negative experiences with certain people or situations, or even expectations that may have been set forth by society.

The belief systems that you grow up with and hold today are often a result of social institutions (family, education, media, etc.) that instilled those beliefs upon us – it was what we were taught to believe about ourselves about the world – good AND bad.

It might develop due to stories and beliefs that we hold over ourselves in response to these preconceived expectations. Perhaps as we navigate challenges or uncomfortable situations. S

Why we believe we aren’t good enough
why we believe we can’t do something
why we don’t like the way we look
why we don’t feel good
why we don’t have meaningful relationships
why we don’t feel respected or seen
why we aren’t happy…

These are stories that are simply not true! 

You are a master conductor of energy and creation without realizing it…

…and every *thing* you think and speak into existence has the potential to become kinetic and tangibly appear in your world!

It happens like this…

Words come from thoughts – both of which hold frequency and energy
You might listen to or believe these words and thoughts that you have
You apply meaning to these words and thoughts.
You experience the reality of these words and thoughts as truth, and feel the energy that you applied to them through attached meaning.

Here’s an example – 

You decide to hire a nutritionist to help you improve your wellness.

This nutritionist might be super supportive of you and your success, and show you the path to take you from point A to point B.

But if you don’t believe that this is possible for you, then it quite simply won’t be. It will be just as hard as you make it out to be because you aren’t energetically getting behind the solution and the pathway to the results you are seeking! The more resistance you create around the situation, the harder this will be and feel for you.

• If you tell yourself you aren’t making progress and find a problem within every solution, you will hold yourself away from progress and success in your efforts.
• If you don’t enjoy the process you are following to transform your body, you will not enjoy the long term lifestyle and commitment of living well for life.
• If you continuously look at yourself in the mirror, poking and prodding yourself and speaking of your dissatisfaction of your appearance, you will never feel happiness and fulfillment at any stage or season of your body.

We can’t hate our bodies into a version of it that we love!

I have personally seen all of this happen!

Which is why I’ve built SM Nutrition on a foundation of spirituality and self-love. This has to come first before we decide to manipulate nutritional and lifestyle factors to influence positive wellness. We have to first come into love, trust, and respect for ourselves, the food we choose to eat, and the body that we reside within!

So how do we get off of this negative hamster wheel?

1. Recognize when you’re engaging in negative self talk, STOP – don’t make it mean anything.

Convert from judgmental to observant!

Simply notice when it is happening, how it is happening, and why. I notice that when I get into a pattern of negative thinking, that my body is almost conditioned to be addicted to the sadness that follows it, and to continue with the negative string that I’ve already started.

HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, and simply observe the circumstances in which these thoughts have occurred!

WARNING: The following actions can feel really hard and emotional especially if we are breaking into deep sh*t that makes you bring up memories and experiences that are painful. But if this blog article is speaking to you because all of this feels like it’s helping uncover your truth, then this is your sign that you should trust the path. Sometimes we can’t enter into the light until we plunge deep into our own darkness.

2. GRAB A JOURNAL and hash out the following prompts:

• What are you doing?
• What has happened to make you begin thinking this way?
• What is the belief, story, or experience that makes you think that this is the truth?
• Do you really and truly deep down believe that this is the truth? If so, why?
• If not, GREAT. How can we debunk this BS?
• What is a statement you can create that defines your new truth and experience?
• Write this statement down at your desk, put it on a sticky note on your bathroom mirror, put it in your phone as a reminder, stick it on your fridge – put it anywhere and everywhere you need it to be to remind you that this is your foundational truth!

Example: You consider yourself a *boss babe* and feel stress and pressure when you aren’t producing. It’s Monday morning at 5am and you decide to hit the snooze button because you’re exhausted from a busy weekend instead of hitting the gym. You tell yourself you aren’t working hard enough and that you’re lazy. Or, you decide to push yourself past your exhaustion and override your body’s call to rest. You feel really guilty, stressed, and unhappy in both scenarios.

You decide to become the gentle observer of your own inner dialogue with yourself during one of these situations and journal through it.

You come from a hardworking family and believe that your value as a person is due to your ability to produce and perform well, even if it means that you push yourself past the point of exhaustion.

You develop this foundational truth – you are valuable because of who you are, not as a result of what you produce.

3. REMINDER: You are not f*cked up

Phew – that was a lot of writing! I’m freaking proud of you for taking these first few steps. Remember that these negative thoughts may be recurring and may pop up more and more especially as you become more aware of it. This might seem really counterintuitive and for a moment you might even feel like your grief and pain are getting worse. This actually happened to me when I first started and I think it’s important to highlight the nitty gritty details that come with this work!

When I first began digging up all of the BS that I’ve been telling myself over the years, all of the painful stories and lies that held be back away from my fullest potential, it took me months to reconcile that there was nothing wrong with me. This is why it is SO IMPORTANT to become the gentle observer of your thoughts and emotions and to not judge yourself for thinking and feeling ways that may not serve your highest good.

It’s really okay. It doesn’t mean you are f*cked up and it doesn’t mean that you are farther away from the light. I held myself away from my happiness through this process because I made my darkness mean that I was messed up more than other people and this was going to be hard for me just like everything else in my life had been up to that point. NOT TRUE.

Experiencing thoughts and situations that are undesirable show you new ways of being

• This is NOT what you want, but helps you figure out exactly what it is you do want so you can ask to be more available to that!
• That a higher way of being and feeling is available to you!

4. Return to your innate power to turn sh*t into diamonds

Whenever you feel yourself slipping down the sticky slope of negativity, return to these practices and remind yourself that you have the power to turn sh*t into diamonds.

All it takes to feel better is the proclamation to the Universe that you are open and available for new positive energy, for a new way of seeing things, for being available to the solution. To having more faith. In order to do this, you have the energetically GET BEHIND your foundational truths.

At first, you will have to remind yourself of these statements. They will sound good to your brain, but it might not connect in your body quite yet.

What to do:

• I want you to begin observing little “breadcrumbs” (I have a blog post on this here) that occur in your reality that are showing you that positivity is starting to seep in through the cracks you’ve created when you decided to break out of your own mental matrix. This is proof that it’s working – NOT MATTER HOW SMALL. It’s all happening for you and it’s all adding up.
• Ask to receive a sign from the Universe! You can define what this sign might be, or you can choose to leave that up to your perception to receive.
• Ask for the power to hold these bits from the universe as GOOD ENOUGH. It can be easy to second guess yourself when you receive your sign – was that it? Was it powerful enough? The answer is YES. Receive it.

Personal story:

This was a foundational truth I created for myself earlier this year – “I am willing and available to have more faith”.

It can be easy for me to slip into hopelessness and when I get into this space, it can be hard for me to shift from here. A lot of this is because someone who used to be influential on my life told me I was breaking my connection with abundance and my ability to manifest my desires into my world when I was in such a place of low vibe. But this was confusing because how was I supposed to override and ignore my feelings? That didn’t feel good.

So my advice – if you feel a feeling, feel it. Feel it all. Don’t judge yourself for it and don’t be afraid that you are ruining everything. You haven’t ruined anything. You’re allowed to be human. The idea is to find a way to shift away from this when you feel the courage to have control and influence over these feelings and your personal vibration. I feel better about this when I hold my heart, take a breath, and pray for the ability to shift my energy into a more positive space. That I am open and willing to have more faith and to experience a higher flow of abundance.

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Do these practices resonate with you? Do you have any special routines that you take to help you shift from low vibe to high vibe? Let me know below in the comments!