Words....

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about words, and how they affect us. It’s certain that words can have a strong effect on us, but can we control the extent of the effect? Certainly negative words have a stronger effect, so could we introduce more positive words to counter balance this?

The past year has been both a physical and a mental transformation. I honestly have to say the mental one has been and still is so much harder. I still see a chubby girl in the mirror, even when I look at the tag and see a number 8. It’s something that I struggle with daily. There are days I have to pick one thing that I like about what I see in the mirror, and I use that one thing to get out of the house and into the world. Unfortunately it’s the words of others that I hear on these days, and not the positive one.

I have the most incredible roommate. She tells me daily exactly how good she thinks I look and how all my hard work has paid off. She does not tolerate one word of negativity, and when something looks less than stellar, she’s the first to say it’s the clothes not the person, and the wrong cut could make even her size 2 frame look less than amazing.

But on those days that nothing looks quite right, it’s not her that I hear

 It’s the “friend” that told me that no matter how hard I work, men will never really be attracted to me, because I will always be “large” and I will never be “petite”. That, so long as I’m standing next to my roommate, no man will ever see me, because he’ll be looking at her. It’s the boy I wanted to date that, I thought wanted to date me that told me that I was over his weight limit for girlfriends. It’s every guy at a bar that’s come up to talk to my roommate and I, and then when she wasn’t interested or had a boyfriend, walked away. It’s every guy that talked to me all night and asked for my number, only to never be heard from again. It’s the friend of a friend that talked to me daily for 4 months, met me, and then wasn’t interested anymore.

So every day, my roommate and my friends and my family tell me how good I look, and what an amazing person I am. Then occasionally strangers and acquaintances say or do negative things. All that I think about is the bad stuff. Even in this post I was able to make quoted remarks about the negative things, and listed the positive things generically; because it’s the negative things that I hear in my head daily. How do I go about changing this? The easy answer is “Don’t listen to anyone but yourself”. But that’s not really an answer. To me it’s the same as saying “you don’t have any money?”  “well then go win the lottery”. It’s simply not that easy.

Not easy; but possible. I’m a firm believer that nothing worth having is easily attained. So I am making a concentrated effort to hear less negative and more positive. The first thing that I’ve done is that every time I think something negative about myself or a situation, I think of something positive to go along with it. At first it was difficult, and the positive things I thought of were actually just snarky sarcastic negative things. But slowly, it’s started to set in. This morning I thought how I didn’t want to go to work and I was so exhausted and work can be boring when you’re new and don’t know what you’re doing. Then I flipped it. I’m exhausted because I had a super fun weekend with great friends. I’m sometimes bored at work because I’m new, I’m new because I just accepted a position in a field I’m actually passionate about, with amazing opportunities to be had in the future.

I have also tried to stop articulating the negatives that come into my head. This has proven very difficult. I’ve realized that I’m snarky and sarcastic, and apparently quite the complainer. But in the last year and a half I’ve managed to quit saying “I wish…..” and started just making those things happen. So there’s no reason why I can’t stop complaining. Now when I think of something negative, instead of articulating it, I think of something positive about the situation and move on. This is a work in progress. I complain a lot. I think this tactic may actually make me a quieter person in general. Good thing I have a blog to talk about not complaining on.

The other thing I did was start having a positivity quote of the day. Turns out my roommate and I are both complainers. We have a lot of first world problems; which pretty much means no real problems at all. So every day for the past month I texted her a cheesy quote to think about for the day. It’s hard for me to pick a favorite, but here are a few I really like.

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get – Dale Carnegie

The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts – Marcus Aelius Aurelius

If you do what you’ve always done, you will get what you’ve always got. – Mark Twain

At first it was really silly. But the quotes kept coming to me in a really serendipitous way, throughout the course of every day, so I kept sending them to her.  Then one day after a couple of weeks I was having a really pouty day and feeling sorry for myself, and that Marcus Aurelius quote came into my head. And, to quote Barney Stinson “I stopped feeling sad and started feeling awesome instead” and it worked. I had thought of that quote and used it to change my mindset. Because I’m in charge of how I feel. What a novel concept!

The change I’m trying to make is not easy, but I think it’s truly worth it. It is something I’m going to have to work on every day. But everyday it’s getting easier, and I hope that at some point it will be second nature.

There will always be something to complain about. There will always be something not going your way. There will always be someone that has a problem with what you’re doing. But if you’re taking an active role in the happiness of your life, then there will always be something to be thankful for. There will always be something wonderful happening. There will always be someone that loves you.

You just have to decide which you want to see.