You aren’t going to bed when you really want to; you are staying up WAY too late. Or you keep pushing snooze when you told yourself you were NOT going to do that anymore. Here you are again rushing around, late. Not only did you not workout this morning, but you did NOT have your quiet time, and didn’t pack that healthy lunch you promised yourself you would do, because it is Monday. You get to work only to realize you forgot to do that thing for your co-worker like you said you would, and now you are done for.
Finished. You can’t stand you. You can never trust yourself. You never do what you say you are going to do. You forget. You don’t follow through. You are absolutely tired of this, but on top of it all you feel hopeless because this is ALWAYS the way it is. This is just who you are. You will never really change.
So when it’s your lunch break, you head to Chick-fil-a grab the chicken sandwich, french fries, and the sweet tea. You have this horrible conversation with yourself about how you will never be the ideal version of you. You won’t ever lose the weight, feel connected with God, or stop being late in life. You won’t find a guy, get married and have the family you really want. You grab your phone and scroll through Instagram and see all of your friends better off than you. Susie from your sorority in college got married over the weekend; she is skinny, so of course she did. Then you see your other friend Jill, with pictures of her new baby and their adorable nursery that they made her. You start to feel frustrated and confused.
Why is this happening to them and never going to happen for you?
That reminds you of that guy Jason, that you just met online, that you started to trust and then he ghosted you, yeah, see, it never works out. So you start playing Merge Blocks on your phone, get lost in the game and look up to see that you are now late. Where did the time go?
“Oh, I shouldn’t have gotten the number one, I should have gotten the salad. I shouldn’t have scrolled through my phone; I should have been walking instead. UGH!!!”
Your day goes on like this and it is only 1pm. This is the cycle of you creating a horrible relationship with you. You have zero trust with yourself. You have these thoughts, impulses, things that you think are going to make you feel better; the #1, the game on your phone, the scrolling Instagram. But they never do and they are keeping you from the life you truly want.
You are tired of being a victim to you. You aren’t even in control, you feel like something else is. You try and show up, but you never really do. You are just living at the effects of you and you are SO over it.
So what do you do?
Your relationship with you is actually 3 relationships in one. It is your past self, present self, and future self all in a relationship with one another.
This relationship is complex. Present self has a lot of thoughts about past self. Present self also has a lot of dreams for future self. But present self is with present self, and it all boils down to present self’s trust or self-doubt. That is where we must begin. Your ability to trust you. Present self has to trust present self. As you do trust yourself and start showing up as you say you will your relationship with your past self and even future self changes.
Re-building this relationship is vital for you to start having self-confidence.
So let’s use the example of you staying up late last night. Your present self at 7am when you have snoozed your alarm clock four times, is frustrated with your past self that chose to stay up late. When you were your present self (at midnight) choosing to stay up late binge watching Netflix, you were only thinking about your present self and feeling good in the moment. You were NOT thinking about your future self at all.
There are 3 ways to make this relationship better.
1. Accept yourself as is.
So when you do wake up after pushing snooze, accept that past self chose to feel good in the moment setting up present self with this current circumstance. Don’t beat past self up. Seek to understand past self. Think through what was going on with past self that she would want to binge watch Netflix. Seek to see her. When I understand that the reason I feel tired this morning is because I chose to stay up late last night. I chose that. I want to understand why I chose to stay up late. What was I feeling last night that made me choose to binge watch Netflix?
When you can begin to understand that you make your choices based on how you are feeling, you can understand what you want to avoid feeling or want to feel more of. See yourself, accept what is, don’t add on self-hate. Get to the root of where you are and accept that version of you.
2. Take ownership of your actions
Get really honest with what you are doing. I chose to not get out of bed when my alarm went off. Own it. Don’t blame past self. Don’t throw ammunition at past self and give it a beat down. You only build up more evidence that past self can’t be trusted and is no good. Just deal with it. So I didn’t wake up to my alarm. So what? It is fine. I can still create the day I want with this small set-back. I will still make a super healthy choice today for lunch and grab a salad at Chick-fil-a. I will go walking for my 10-minute break this afternoon. I will still make the choices I want to make today. I am not living at the effects of my past self’s decisions. I am not a victim to myself. I can make present decisions that set up my future self. I am creating the life I want in the future, one decision at a time. Own it.
3. Start thinking more about future self, and delay present self’s instant gratification.
When you can feel the discomfort, or handle your negative emotions without escaping or numbing out, you will start to get good at staying present right where you are. When you are present you can start to make great decisions that set-up your future self. Delayed gratification leads to greater long-term satisfaction. When you choose to not eat the candy bar now and feel the urge or hunger, you delay the gratification for the greater satisfaction of those size 10 jeans fitting. You start to honor your future self more and more. When you want to stay up late you remember your future self and think I know how rested and amazing I will feel tomorrow if I can stop numbing out on this Netflix series right now.
When you start rebuilding your relationship with your past, present, and future versions of you, it can be a game changer to becoming who you really do want to be.
You start trusting you will do what you said you will do. You will follow through on your plan. And when you don’t, you know exactly why you didn’t. You will take care of you. You will do the responsible and useful thing for yourself, even when you don’t feel like it. This is very different from saying you will do something and then hoping you follow through. When you continually don’t follow through you create a lot of self-doubt, which is the opposite of self-confidence. If you can’t count on yourself, you will feel insecure and “at the effect” of yourself instead of in charge, in control, and self-confident. The ability to trust yourself starts from consistent follow through on your word to yourself. You weren’t born with this innate ability to trust yourself and have self-confidence. You earn it from yourself by keeping your word and doing what you say at the highest level.
Remember this is going to be a process of changing your thoughts.
You will have to let go of these thoughts:
I will always be this way
I never change
It doesn’t matter because we know I won’t do it
I can never be trusted
I knew I couldn’t
I am no good at this
I don’t know how to fix this
I don’t know if I will
There could be things that come up or happen
And start believing these thoughts:
I can become whoever I want to be
I create change for myself
I know I will do it
I can trust me
I know I can
I can get better at this
I am learning how to fix this
I will commit to this result
No matter what I will stick to my plan
Once you begin to trust yourself you can start to build your self-confidence. Which I will talk all about next week. Let’s start with trust and see what that alone starts to create.
Working on trusting myself right along with you,
Angie
