Unspoken

I made a pledge on 7/21 (the day after my 43^rd birthday, coincidentally) to refrain from saying negative things about other people with some of my 8 Elements family. Being something of an overachiever, I extended that pledge to include myself. The initial pledge was to go through the end of 2014 though my intention is to allow this to become just a part of me. I thought, on the 21^st, that this would be a piece of cake.

Yeah, it’s not. I’m finding it much easier to stay positive about others than to stay positive about myself. Why? Why isn’t it an automatic thing to give myself as much credit as the people around me? I know I’m not alone – there are probably millions of blog posts and magazine articles and self-help books that talk about how hard we are, especially women, on ourselves. I’ve been able to feel annoyance, even anger, with others and rewrite my narrative on the fly. “That person who darted out into traffic directly in front of my moving vehicle?  They must have somewhere really urgent to go, or they simply haven’t had the same experiences I’ve had with the power of motor vehicles..." instead of, well, you can imagine what my thoughts and words might have been before taking this pledge. When it comes to me? Not so easy.

I actually had something of a crisis of mind on day 4…I realized that, without negative things to say about myself, my internal dialog was silent. I’d ended up mute inside my head! Not a good feeling, and realizing that feeling this silence meant that I’d been running a non-stop negative dialog in my head before didn’t feel good, either. After a rough weekend I came up with a plan…I’d get a little notebook and write down positive things about myself when I thought of them so I’d have something to refer to when things got all silent in my head. 

 I’ve carried that notebook around with me ever since. I don’t have much in there, but the fact that it’s not empty feels good and reassuring, and going through that exercise has helped me land in a more comfortably positive place in my head. I’m still much better at being kind to the outside world, but I’ve maintained my pledge for more than a month now and don’t see myself turning back. I’ve had 2 hiccups of negativity but they’ve been short and did not cause any external harm. I’ve been able to find a slightly more comfortable space in my head when it comes to myself and have seen the difference reflected in my dancing and in my general confidence levels. I’m looking forward to seeing how much things have changed by December, too.

Will you take this pledge – even part of it? Look at this as part of your health & wellness plan. Working out your internal dialog generator might be just as important as building up cardiovascular fitness, don’t you think?