I made a protein shake in one of those shaker cups. I took out some vitamins and left them in the indentation near the built-in straw. I let the protein shake sit so it would thicken, since I only used water. Then, I mindlessly reached for the cup and started shaking it to remix the water with the powder at the bottom of the cup.
Out of the corner of my eye I see something go flying. Ugh! I forgot that the vitamins were in the top of the cup! Now they are on the filthy rug of my office. Yuck!
“MORON!” I hear myself say.
Wow. I haven’t said something like that in a VERY long time – I can’t even remember how long. But I know how to handle it!
“I am not a moron. I just don’t pay attention sometimes. But I am very smart, very intelligent, very creative, even genius in some ways!”
You see, I will not allow the last thing my mind hears to be something negative about myself. My mind cannot tell real from fantasy, good from bad. It just stores and acts upon whatever I say, believing it to be the truth. I have swallowed enough damaging lies in my life fed to me by others and the enemy of my soul – I don’t need to feed them to myself as well!
Our self talk, whether it is silent or spoken, is a huge reason why we continue to believe lies, and why the lies are so hard to dislodge. Every judgement statement, whether good or bad, is like a brick we lay in the foundation of our house, upon which we build the rest of our building. If the foundation is negative, the house will rot from the inside out. If the foundation is positive, we will build a fortress that can literally withstand the gates of Hell!
We think of words as things that come out of our mouth and then are gone forever, leaving no trace. But anyone who has ever been hurt by someone else’s words knows that words can have a lifelong effect on how we view ourselves, others and the world. We just haven’t put it together yet that the same is true for the words WE speak to and about ourselves.
Everything about us started with what our caretakers taught us. They passed on to us what made them afraid, what hurt them, what made them angry. They modeled what they believed was the correct method to do things, from flipping burgers to washing clothes to expressing our emotions.
If they said we were awesome, that was the law. We were awesome. But unfortunately, as many of us know too well, a lot of parents don’t continually think and say that their kids are awesome. They say things like,
- “There is something wrong with you!”
- “You are just like your father!” (obviously that is not a good thing when said like that)
- “Can’t you do anything right?”
Some parents were encouragers, while others were disablers:
- “Don’t do that! You will get hurt!”
- “Do you know how many germs are out there, and how nasty they are?”
- “There are killers and stalkers out there everywhere, and you’re such a pretty girl, you would be a real target.”
- “They really only take pretty, thin girls for cheerleaders. Just stick with band.”
- “She has such a pretty face, it’s just a shame… (fill in the blank with the insinuation that the rest of her is so ugly)
When a judgement is spoken by someone in authority, it becomes a written law in your book of beliefs. Disconnecting from something you heard as a child from the “law makers”, and upon which you have built an entire high rise , is extremely hard. All of your subsequent behaviors were based on those laws that told you who you were or were not, what you could or could not do.
If you ever stop and listen to your self-talk, you’ll hear what others have told you about yourself, or what you have eventually come to believe because of how others have treated you. That’s why the ECHO process is so important. Sometimes we need someone else to show us what we really believe about ourselves and our world by showing us what we are saying.
Proverbs says it beautifully – first of all, guard what is planted into your heart and what you allow yourself to believe, because everything you do will be based on it. Also make sure you do not speak what is not true.
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
Keep your mouth free of perversity; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. Proverbs 4:23-24
So, in this series we will discuss how self-talk works, both positively and negatively, and where it comes from, and how we can use it to dismantle the age old lies and replace it with the truth.
RESET ASSIGNMENT:
- Do you catch yourself talking to yourself? If so, what do you hear yourself talking about, or saying to yourself?
- Do you ever correct yourself? If so, what do you say in response to your self-talk?