How To Stop Running On Empty, (And Feel Vital Again) By Changing What You Say To Yourself First
Does this scene replay daily for you? Something good happens, a compliment, a small win, a moment you're proud of, and before you can even enjoy it, your mind is already reaching for the "but." It’s like you catch the good that happened but immediately handing it back.
What made matters worse was that I kept this cycle going - deflecting positivity from others in my life - especially my husband. This happened for decades without me realizing it was quietly draining my energy every single day.
We all need support. Having someone we can share what we do well with daily sets up a team to help us succeed.
At first, without being aware of it, I set my husband up to be the opposite of encouraging.
He meant well, but he constantly told me to stop worrying and stop complaining. He was accurate. I worried a lot and judged myself harshly on a daily basis for what I wasn't good at doing.
It was when I learned how to encourage myself that I could actually start setting him up to be my best encourager. This also set up our relationship to have more energy and vitality. You want to set yourself up to have vitality, so your relationships have more energy too. This moves you both forward with vitality, together.
I first had to learn how to shift my focus from judging myself, always seeing what wasn't good enough, to appreciating myself for what I could do.
It took me several years to notice how many of my sentences began with "the problem is." A great vacation but the problem was I never sleep well on vacation,. A wonderful beach day, but the problem is I'm exhausted now. A cute new bathing suit, but the problem is how I look in it. I was treating my whole life like an unsolvable problem, and it took two coaches pointing this pattern out to me before I could finally see it myself.
That's when I understood something important: the vitality I wanted for myself and the vitality I wanted in my marriage were never two separate projects. They were the same one. I couldn't hand my husband a tired, self-critical version of me and expect him to hand back energy and encouragement. Whatever I was bringing to the relationship, he was reflecting back, and I had been bringing a lot of worry.
So I started looking for what was actually working in my life, and I began treating the things that didn't work as steps that were getting me closer to what I wanted. My coaches were the ones who first caught me sliding into "the problem is" instead of "here's what I'm doing that's working,". Having someone reflect that pattern back to me made all the difference. Learning to let go of what wasn't working and keep moving forward was one of the biggest changes I've ever made, for myself and for us.
Your attitude comes from within, and once mine shifted, our whole dynamic shifted with it. I had to first embody the new way of thinking. This wasn’t just a mental change that happened overnight. I used my movement and mindset classes to change my brain and the way that I received my successes and failures. It is neuro re-programming that involves the body and mind together, learning to move instead of stay stuck in the same patterns that create low energy and dissatisfaction. This has been a whole new way of appreciating myself that I hadn’t learned growing up.
As I changed my body and my mindset - I changed my neuropathways, to be able to give encouragement to myself. Then, I started setting up the people around me, including my husband and my daughters, to support me, because I was finally giving them something to support. Now, instead of telling me to stop worrying, my husband cheers me on, because I'm the one sharing my successes with him, big and small. We build our vitality together, one appreciation at a time.
This new way of thinking has made me healthier and stronger, and it has made us stronger too, simply by appreciating success more, in myself and in each other.