What You Say to Yourself Matters.
What you say to yourself matters. It matters a lot. Yesterday on coffee and tea with Carrie Vee, we talked about not letting what is going on in the world around you determine what is going on inside of you inside your heart and your soul in your mind, your spirit. Well, today, we're gonna talk about the things that you say to yourself.
And the things you say to yourself that you would never say to anyone else. The things we say to ourselves sometimes are so mean so cruel. We would never speak them out loud to someone else. But we are very, very open and very free at speaking them to ourselves. When I had my surgery a few weeks ago, so abdominal surgery, where they pump you full of abdominal gases or medical gases, whatever those things are, I don't know if I'm going to speak all the right terminology. Just bear with me. So they fill you full of these medical gases. And then they're cutting. I had five incisions, they took out the right side of my large intestine along with the C gum. And so there were a lot of and then they also looked around my entire abdominal cavity.
There was a lot going on in there. stitches inside stitches outside, well, not stitches, but glue. Which by the way, side note, do you ever look at those colluding decisions and wonder if they're really going to hold like every day I was looking at them going? What? What if that glue dissolves before I'm healed, I had to put it out of my mind. Okay, total side note. But all this stuff is going on inside of you physically, and it's going to, it's going to cause some swelling, it's going to cause the surgery like that causes a lot of swelling, a lot of bloating, so bloating from the gas and you have swelling from being cut up and pieces removed and things moved around and all of these things. So the morning after surgery, they got me up to walk. And I was walking walking around when we got back. I wanted to use the restroom. So I went into the bathroom and I was washing my hands and I just wanted to see what all the all of those incisions looked like, you know, I'm curious, I want to see. I know he cut into me. I wanted to see what I was looking like. And I lifted my hospital gown and the words that came out of my mouth. Were this out loud. Oh, my gosh. You look like the Michelin Man. Oh my gosh, you look like the Michelin Man. And I immediately caught myself. I am a coach. I coach other people on not tearing themselves down like that, on hot, treating themselves with disrespect on controlling the thoughts and the mean things that we say to ourselves. I am a coach and it's what I teach on. we name our mean girl, our mean guy and we and we and I will actually talk to my main girl and say Stacy now
I'm sorry if your name is Stacy and you're listening to this, I love you. It's just mean girl in my head, Stacy, I have a problem with her. And I'll say Stacy, you need to go now. But in that moment, in that moment, looking at those incisions and looking at the results of my core, less than 24 hours after surgery. The words that came out of my mouth were oh my gosh, you look like the Michelin Man. Now I can assure you of this. If you had abdominal surgery, and I came to visit you. And you said to me want to take a look at my incisions or it's not feeling quite right, would you look at my incisions? And you showed me your midsection? Do you know what I would say to you? Words of compassion, like, Wow, you've been through so much, that must have really hurt. You are so strong and courageous to be going through this. I'm so proud of you. I can guarantee you what I would not say to you is holy cow. You look like the Michelin Man. Can you imagine a friend saying that to you? Can you imagine anyone saying something so cruel? Can you imagine saying anything so cruel? But boy, are we quick to say it to ourselves? Those words came out of my mouth so fast, so fast.
It astounded me how quick I was to tear myself down, and not give myself the compassion that I deserved. I had just put my body through a controlled accident. I had just let a doctor make five incisions in my abdominal cavity filled me up with medical gases, remove parts of my intestinal system, put me back together again. What did I expect?
What did I expect?
Why were the first words out of my mouth compassion for myself. Why wasn't I praising myself for being so brave? Because COVID no one could go in with me. I walked into that hospital to face this major surgery to remove cancer from my body by myself. And I didn't break down. And sob though I wanted to. I held myself together, I should have been praising myself telling myself how proud I was of myself for going in there and facing this and doing it and getting up less than 24 hours later, and walking the hallway, ready to go home. Instead, instead, I was tearing myself down, tearing my body down for doing exactly what it needed to do create inflammation to protect me and start the healing process.
Why was I so quick to tear myself down, I wouldn't tear you down. I'd be praising you up one side the other. I would be telling you how amazingly awesome you are. Because you are. So I got back to my recliner in the hospital room. And I sat down. And I started to journal. And I apologize to myself and to my body for being so brutally mean. And I started to replace it with those kind words, those loving words. You're so brave, you're so strong, you are so strong. You laid there on that table and you let that doctor cut that cancer out of you. You're so brave. And not only that you woke up the next morning with me and we went for a walk. And we're going to get through this together. If you would not be willing to say those words to somebody else, don't say them to yourself. If you are not willing to say those things that we you say to yourself out loud to somebody else, then stop saying them to yourself, stop.
You deserve love and respect. You deserve to be praised. You deserve kindness. And if no one else around you wants to show you those things, guess what you can show them to yourselves. Remember yesterday we talked about there's no strings on me. Well, there are no strings on you. And if you want to praise yourself every day and you should then do it. And if you want to buy yourself flowers, then doggone do it. Don't wait for somebody else to buy you flowers. Go buy them for yourself. Tell yourself self You are so amazing. You know what I'm buying you flowers today. Don't let words come out of your mouth or tearing yourself down or thoughts that are tearing yourself down. You deserve all of the kindness, respect, honor and love in the universe, show it to yourself. And here's the cool part. When you show yourself that love, it is so much easier to show it to others. Love yourself. Stop being so mean to yourself. Be as kind to yourself as you would be to your best friend. What you say to yourself matters. It's the difference between never meeting your goals and meeting every single goal is the difference between feeling feeling awful every day and feeling amazing every day. It's the difference between being in control and being out of control.
You can control your own mind, you can control your own thoughts and you can control what you say to yourself. Promise me you will do that. Your journal prompt today the 10 things I say to myself that I am choosing today to let go of are the 10 things. The 10 main things I say to myself that I am choosing to let go of today our journal those out. in the show notes I have put a link to 30 journal prompts that you can use to get you journaling. Make sure that you take advantage of that. I am here for you.