Would you say that to someone you love?

WARNING: I wrote this and it got deleted so this is my attempt at rewriting it. It will probably never be as good as the original as most reboots aren't.

Would you say that to someone you love? Would you tolerate someone saying that to someone you love? Would you ever say to someone you love what you say to yourself? The answer is probably no. So why do I let myself talk down to me?

This year for lent, rather than giving something up, I decided to add a daily mantra. Every day I said "Would you say that to someone you love". The phrase sat on my phone's lock screen. The phrase was on the right hand corner of my computer. I saw this phrase multiple times every day. And here's what I learned:

I spend too much time in the mirror looking at myself and critiquing what I see. "You're too fat so don't eat anything today". "You're always going to be ugly with gross hair. No point in putting makeup on or trying to fix your hair." "You're going to die alone if you stay like this."

I started taking a step back and saying "Would I say this to my sisters? To my friends? To my mom? So why do I say this to myself" Here's thing thing: We spend too much time criticizing ourselves. If I start to believe what my negative self talk has to say, then I will never allow myself to grow. If I believe I'm going to be overweight forever, then I'm going to convince myself that it doesn't matter what I do. It supports every unhealthy habit I have. I should drink more water. I should exercise more. I should take better care of myself. But that's hard to do when my thoughts are so negative. You will never allow yourself the opportunity to a better life if you stay marinating in your current mess. If I slip further into the negative thoughts and the toxic behaviors. I will never get better. This is not fun to realize.

This daily mantra has forced me to grow. It has forced me to say "I can't talk to me like this." It has forced me to look at the things I don't like and say "Well I can't control that my skin breaks out, that's life" or "Well if I don't like gaining so much weight, then I should be smarter about food and exercise". It takes negative self talk and turns it into constructive building. Because if my friend said "Hey I don't like how much weight I'm gaining and want to change something" then I would offer to help them. I've basically just friended myself. The daily mantra has flip turned my entire life.

I now stand here, the day before Easter, and realize that I have to keep this mantra forever. Maybe not forever, but it's definitely not retiring any time soon. Because for the first time in my life, I'm making real progress. Self love isn't something that comes from a month of daily mantras. It comes from years and years of work. And after 3ish years of actively working, I'm starting to turn the corner. Some days I will be bloated. Some days no amount of makeup will be able to conceal my acne. And that's ok. That's part of being a human. There's no reason to beat myself up over it.

So to anyone out there who looks in the mirror and criticizes what they see: Would you say that to someone you love?