Self Talk Challenge
Self Talk Challenge
Scroll down for the actual “challenge”–it’s underlined.
Self Talk—the stuff we continually say to ourselves in our heads, in our thinking. Is your self talk positive or negative?
Your self talk could be undermining or it could be enhancing your weight loss efforts. Which do you think yours is doing?
Monitor your self talk
The first thing to do is to monitor your self talk. What are you actually thinking about yourself? What are you saying out loud about yourself? (Your speech comes from what you are thinking.) Do you call yourself stupid, ugly, fat, clumsy or any other negative terms? If so you could be undermining your weight loss efforts!
Can you see the connection here? If you are calling yourself “fat”, you are subconsciously telling yourself that you can’t be “thin”—that you are fat, so your subconscious could be prodding you to eat more!! But other negative terms will have the same effect—perhaps telling your subconscious that you are not worthy to be thin or that you are not valuable enough to take proper care of your body. The actual specifics could be a wide variety of things here depending upon the individual person— that’s why monitoring your own self talk and customizing your affirmations is so important.
Note: Your self talk is influencing *all* areas of your life, not just your weight loss efforts. You could be sabotaging or helping your relationships, your finances, your career, and your health by what you are thinking and saying to yourself.You may not be in the habit of monitoring your thoughts. If so, you may have a little trouble at first. If so, you could first try monitoring your moods instead. Check out my other post on this subject here:
http://www.cherylcope.com/beyond-thought-awareness/
We become what we think
For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he…Pr. 23:7 KJVModern researchers have found that thoughts cause electrical impulses in our brains and also release certain chemicals. Good thoughts release good chemicals like serotonin. Bad thoughts release bad chemicals like cortisol. (Too much cortisol stresses our adrenal glands.) These chemicals in turn cause changes to our physical being either for the good or for the bad. In this way, science has proven this Bible verse to be true. (Not that we needed science to prove it, but it sure is interesting when it does!)
Our speech is related to our thoughts
I don’t have space here to go into all the details as to why this is true, but we say things that we have been thinking. Science has also proven the opposite, that we can influence our thinking or beliefs by what we say out loud. What we say out loud to ourselves seems to have more power than just our thoughts alone. This is illustrated by the creative power of words by the fact that when God spoke, things came into existence. (God created us in Him image, and from my observations and things I’ve read, God seems to have given us some of this creative power of words as well.)
Self talk challenge
My challenge to you is to start saying positive things to yourself out loud. Commit to doing this for at least 30 days. You could do this for several minutes at a set time every day, but it will be most effective if you also interrupt your actual negative thinking or negative speaking to yourself as it is happening with positive replacements. If after 30 days you don’t start to notice improvements I will be very surprised. Once you start, if you skip a day, don’t beat yourself up about it!! Just start over again. Unfortunately, though, if you skip a day, you may need to do this longer than 30 days to see the benefits. That’s the nature of habit change. If you slip into your old habits, it takes longer for the new habit (in this case the habit of positive self talk or positive affirmations) to be established.
Positive affirmations
The best way to start is to find Biblical truths that are the opposite to the things that you noticed you were saying negatively to yourself. In this way, your “positive affirmations” will be not only be Biblically based but also personalized for you. If you can’t find scripture verses that are the opposite to your negative self talk, ask the Holy Spirit to help you find them! No problem for Him!
If you’d like some “generic” affirmations to get you started, I had a series of blog posts on Biblical affirmations recently. Check this out:
http://www.cherylcope.com/affirmations-on-who-we-are-in-christ-part-3/
(The post link above has links to all my affirmation posts.)
I would love to hear how your self talk challenge is doing at any point in the next few weeks. Please stop back and let me know how you are doing with this and how it has affected your weight loss efforts or any other area of your life. Post in the comment section below.