You are what you think… How you see yourself and the things around really affect the kind of life you will have. It is time to work on how you can change your thoughts so you can change your life.
Have you been off my reading game lately? Me too… After months of not reading, a few weeks ago I picked up You are a badass by Jen Sincero again. I think that also is the reason why I have been in a personal growth slump. I haven’t been consuming content that inspired me on my journey. Anyways I digress… As soon as I finished chapter 6 called “Love the one you is”. I felt inspired to write about this because I do suffer from a negative self-image and have been working hard to stop it,
Reflecting it is apparent, I have not been working hard enough. I have my good days and I have my bad days. Slowly but surely I am falling back into the self-deprecating jokes and having a somewhat shitty outlook on life. I have been doing so well since 2019. I am not trying to go backward.
Change your thoughts, Change your life
So how do you improve the way you think? Can you actually change your thoughts? How long does it take to change the way you think? These are all the questions I had when I first started thinking about changing my mindset.
I have talked about this before that I was a very pessimistic person. Everything good that came into my life I shit on it. Not literally, but figuratively. I always had some snide comment about it. I could never just accept that something good was coming my way… I was doing it so much to the point, that the good things stopped coming.
24/7 I thought my life was shit… so guess what happened. My life became shit 24/7. I put out so much negative energy into the world about me and my life. What was I getting in return… Negative energy back.
Enough is Enough
Growing up I was the ugly fat friend. I was jealous of all the things my friends got for Birthdays, Christmas, or just because. I never had any of that because we were poor. I was always told no when I expressed things that I wanted. So I learned from a very young age not to ask for things I wanted. Only things I needed. I lived like that for a very long time. 2011 is when everything changed because being in that abusive relationship really opened my eyes.
I couldn’t keep living like that. I spent the next year living on my mom’s couch in her assisted living facility. I wasn’t supposed to be there, but we played it off well… because I had nowhere else to go, no money, no job, no motivation, and no confidence… I was at my all-time lowest point. That 5-year abusive relationship just took everything out of me.
So I spent the next year getting a job and working as much as I could to make as much money as I can. I picked up every shift I could. I started appreciating all the little things that would come my way. Making enough money to move out of my mom’s, Having a great group of “friends” (That is a story for a different time). I had some friends with benefits flings. I met the love of my life in June of 2012 and just celebrated 10 years together this year.
I bring all this up because sometimes it takes you being at your lowest point to say enough is enough. It pushes you to say “I don’t want to live this way anymore”. You slowly start to change your thoughts. So you can change your life.
What is the main cause of negative thinking?
When we are born we have this child-like wonder inside of us. We don’t care if our clothes match. We don’t care if someone doesn’t think we are funny. We don’t care if our stories make sense. As a child, we don’t care what other people think of us. As we grow up and start to understand the world… we take what little power we had in not giving a fuck and give it to those around us. We become dependent on others to tell us if we are cool or not. We give it to our parents, our friends, and consumerism. We give our power to all of these outside entities that really don’t know us.
And the older you get the more you end up losing yourself while playing the game called LIFE. We give the majority of our power to the consumer market to make us feel beautiful, to feel smart, to feel wanted, to feel loved. The whole point of the consumer market is to sell you things… And how do they do that? BY preying on your biggest insecurities.
They tell you what the beauty standard is then make you feel like shit “in a nice way” that you are fugly… BUT WAIT… We have something for you to make you feel less fugly… but don’t be mad at us if it doesn’t work the way we marketed it to you. Now you feel like shit even more than you did to begin with and they got your money. They did their job. It is this never-ending cycle. The fashion and beauty community are the biggest culprits.
How do I get rid of negative thoughts?
The first thing you have to do is say fuck it! You have to say fuck it to everything. What I mean by that is saying no to anything that doesn’t bring you joy. Life is too short to be worrying about having the perfect body, perfect hair, nails, and makeup. Too much stress trying to be perfect, not enough time spent on being real.
You have to be willing to put in the work. It doesn’t happen overnight. You spend so many years of your life being a shitty friend to yourself that it takes a little time to get out of the constant funk of being a dick to yourself.
One thing I think that helps a lot is that I give myself an allotted time to write down all the negative thoughts in my head. I grab my journal and just write for 5 to 10 minutes about all my negative thoughts. Once they are written out onto paper they no longer live in my head rent-free. This is what I call my daily negative thought time. Even if a negative thought pops into my head sometime throughout the day… I grab my journal and write it down. I want it out of my head.
Appreciation/Grateful – After I write out my negative thoughts. I like to take a few minutes and write out things that I appreciate about myself or things I am grateful for. You have to show your brain that even though you have negative thoughts it’s okay to express them but also show appreciation for the things you are grateful for. It is okay for you to have negative thoughts, but it is also okay for you not to dwell on them and look for the good in everything. I post almost every Thursday on Instagram what I am thankful for. I suck at social media. LOL
Journal – Although I just told you to have a daily negative thought time. I think it is just as equally important to go back through and read your negative thoughts so you can prove to yourself why your thought process might not be so great. We tend to be the worse critics of ourselves. When you take an objective approach and re-read your negative thoughts you can figure out what you really meant when you thought that or if there is a deeper meaning behind it. It might be something you need to dig deeper into that could be some unresolved childhood trauma.
Do a Life Audit – Once a month or every few months grab your journal and ask yourself these 4 questions. As you do ask them more you may add more, but just for now, let’s start with these 4. Doing a life audit can help keep you on track with the person you are really meant to be.
Be your best friend – I have said this before and I will say it again and again and again. Talk to yourself as you would to your best friend. In this world, we need to be our own best friend before we are to anyone else. We are the ones who are there for ourselves through thick and thin.
How can I train my mind to think positive?
You can train your mind to help you change your thoughts. Working on training your mind or redirecting your thoughts to be positive can really change your outlook on life. Here are a few things you can do to help you.
Pause- When you feel that negative thought coming on stop what you are doing. Tell yourself no. Physically say it out loud if you have to. Hit pause on what you just thought.
Realize you are not the only one who feels this way – A lot of us spend our time thinking we are the only ones who feel/think/look this way and once you realize you are not it can help you to change your thoughts. One thing I have noticed is that although at times the internet can be a vicious place it also helps like-minded people find each other. Creating a community of people who feel just like you do can really change your mindset.
Stop living in your head – When you live more in your head than in the real world things can become very distorted. I wrote a post a while back called Happiness is the harder choice. You don’t think it is but once you take a step back and look at it objectively you can see that happiness is the harder choice. We live so much in our heads and overthink all the negative/toxic traits we learned through society and consumerism. Use those negative thoughts to fuel you.
One piece of advice
I don’t know where I heard this. I wish I could remember because I would love to give credit where credit is due. However, this one piece of advice really changed my life and how I think. When I feel that negative thought coming on and I pause. I think of this…
The first thought you think is what society taught you to think. The second thought you have is what you actually think.
For example… I see a plus-size woman wearing a revealing outfit. I think “Wow that is disgusting. She should have some self-respect” Why is that thought bad? First off because I am plus size. I am fat. Why am I thinking that about a person who has a body type JUST LIKE ME? Secondly, What she wears and how I feel about that is a ME PROBLEM. Not a THEM PROBLEM. Thirdly, this is what society taught us that being fat, plus-size, or big-boned was disgusting and that we all need to cover our bodies. Even in 100-degree weather, we need to cover up our fat bodies! We are not aesthetically pleasing.
So my automatic thought is “eww, cover-up”. But my second thought… what I ACTUALLY think is “No good for her. I wish I was that confident to wear something like that.”
Change your thoughts
Changing your thoughts is no easy task. It takes a lot of work to undo all the toxic/phobic traits we have learned through social media/TV/beauty/fashion industries. All of these toxic/phobic traits are everywhere and it is our job to see what is really going on. They prey on our weaknesses and use them against us to pin us against each other.
Changing the way you think or see the world can really help with the negative thoughts we think on the daily. How we view the world, and how we see ourselves and others is our problem and our problem alone. The only one who can change the way you think is yourself. It is not a one-and-done type of thing. It is something you have to work at daily and have the balls to call yourself out on your own bullshit.
Leave a comment and tell me — What is something you do to help you combat negative thoughts? Or what is one negative thought you have had today? Let’s discuss it!
Until Next Time, Have a Great Day! Remember you are a badass!
