The Voices in Your Head

Do you ever pay attention to the voices in your head? What I mean is, do you ever sort of step outside of your body and think about or evaluate what that inner dialogue is?

The truth is we all "talk to ourselves" all the time. The thoughts swirling around in our heads build our identity of ourselves.

But because we don't really pay attention to them, we sometimes aren't aware when they're doing us some damage. Nor do we realize that we can change them.

Does that make sense? When I was bigger, those thoughts inside my head were not so great. Here's an example.

When I got on an elevator with a bunch of people, I'd immediately think, "Boy, I'm the biggest person on this elevator. I wonder if I'm breathing too loud and if people are thinking, 'Boy, the fat girl breathes really loud.' I bet they don't know that I'm someone's boss. They probably think I'm a temp. My clothes aren't as cute as hers. They don't make cute clothes like that in my size."

Or in the beginning of this journey, I'd wake up in the morning with the intent of working out and those same voices would start in, "I'm so tired! Today is going to suck; back-to-back meetings and it's going to be a long day. I could use the extra hour of sleep. I can always work out when I get home tonight. Or I could skip it and hit it hard tomorrow. It's not like you're actually going to lose any weight anyway. You've been at this for two weeks and nothing has really happened. And even if you do lose five pounds, who's going to notice that? You have 100 to lose ... five pounds won't even matter."

You get the picture.

The more the dialogue put me down, the worse I felt about me. It becomes such a habit and normal, that you don't even realize you're doing it.

The dialogue is different now ... partly because I choose to make it different. I literally talk myself into thinking the RIGHT stuff.

"Do the right things often enough and good things will happen. The workout is the reward ... it's you doing something good for you ... not a punishment. You deserve to treat yourself well. You don't really want that cookie. It doesn't do a single good thing for you. Eat all you want, just eat good stuff. Think of how good it's going to feel five pounds from here."

Think about what you think about. Write it down for a while so you can evaluate it objectively. If you need to change it, practice changing it.

If you can get your head in the right place, I promise your body will follow.