How To Stop Sabotaging Yourself And Your Happiness
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During a particularly tough day of doing first grade math homework with our then seven year old son (thanks Singapore math!) I got extremely frustrated at the homework. My son unfortunately took that as I was irritated at him. He called himself, “stupid.” Oh, my heart felt like it got stabbed a thousand times in those few moments. I felt like such a terrible mom. I wanted to call my self more than stupid at that point.
As moms, we never want our children to ever think they’re dumb, incapable or stupid. What did we do when they were learning to walk, talk, ride a bike or play that first sports game? We cheered them on of course!
I took time to encourage my son and love on him, but it made me think. How many times have I said that to myself about myself? Um, two seconds after my son called him self stupid, and I’m sad to say, too many times to count before that.
How about you? Do you encourage others, but continually discourage yourself through negative self-talk? Do you have Mother Gothel living in your head? Remember Mother Gothel from the movie Tangled?
The woman who did everything in her power to keep Rapunzel from leaving that tower including talking down to her so she would never feel capable of leaving. She was a continually disapproving and manipulative mother who had her own agenda in mind. Does she seem like she’s spending time in your head?
What do you say to yourself when you have those moments of frustration?
What do you say to yourself when you're not feeling up to a certain task or your project didn’t go as planned? How about when you burned dinner for your guests or shrunk your favorite sweater? Are you encouraging to yourself? Do you tell yourself, “you’ll get it next time, just shake it off, give yourself some slack, give yourself time to learn?”
If you’re anything like me, unfortunately the answer is probably a big fat no.
When we have those moments of negative self-talk, does it build us up or tear us down? Does it help our self-image or hurt it?
When we continually talk negatively about our self, we are actually sabotaging ourselves and our ability to experience happiness.
How do we stop sabotaging ourselves? The fastest way to stop sabotaging ourselves and experience true happiness is by changing the way we communicate with ourselves.
The way we communicate with ourselves effects our self-concept. Our self-concept is what we truly think about ourselves. It's what allows us to believe for something greater in our lives. If we have a poor self-concept it will hinder us from God’s best simply because we don’t believe we deserve it like Mother Gothel continually reminding Rapunzel that she can’t make it on her own.
When we have a good self-concept, we’re better equip to succeed in life and enjoy it in the process.
The Bible says in Proverbs 18:21, “The tongue can bring death or life; those who love to talk will reap the consequences” (NLT).
If you’re going to reap consequences of what we speak, including what we speak to ourselves, do we want it to bring us death or bring us life?
The words we mutter to ourselves have power to encourage or discourage, to motivate or deflate, to generate joy or repel it.
I’m sure you feel the same way as I do, I want the words I speak to myself to bring me life. I want to speak joy-talk instead of negative self-talk.
How do we eliminate this sabotaging, negative self-talk and introduce joy-talk, improving our self-concept in the process?
We feel bad when our kids speak negative things about themselves. How do you think our Heavenly Father, our Creator, feels when we do the same?
1. Find out what our Creator says about us.
The Bible says we’re His children; we are His masterpiece.
"For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago." Ephesians 2:10 (NLT)
"For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus." Galatians 3:26 (NLT)
We’ve been made special and have a unique call on our lives that’s been designed for us by our Heavenly Father.
There’s so much the Bible has to say about who we are. The book of Ephesians is a great places to dig in. Notice every time you see “In Him.” He’s talking about us!
2. Agree with what God says about us - aka Joy-talk
Finding out what our Heavenly Father says about us is the first step. Next, we need to begin agreeing with what He says about us.
When those negative thoughts about ourselves come, when we start “trash talking” ourselves, we need to remind ourselves how loved we really are.
Tell yourself, “I am not a mistake, I am God’s masterpiece created for good things.” Remind yourself, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
This is joy-talk. It’s speaking good things over yourself instead of negative things.
You won’t be perfect at this. You’ll slip up and go into “tear yourself down mode,” but as soon as you can, stop yourself! Stop and remind yourself that those negative things are lies. Tell yourself what the truth really is. *Hint–the truth is what God says about you. He made you, He should know.
The sooner we can stop the negative self-talk and speak Joy-talk, agreeing with what God says about us instead, the quicker our mood will change. Not only does joy-talk change our mood, it changes our outlook on life.
By following these simple–but not easy–two steps, you will stop sabotaging your self-concept and bring more happiness and joy into your life.