Mental Wellness through Self-love
It’s that time of year again. New year’s resolution time. This is a great time to reflect on your life and where you want to go, how you want to be for the next 12 months. A lot of the time the messages we get this time of year for new year’s resolutions revolve around our fitness. There are many reasons/benefits why fitness goals are a go to when we think of life goals. But primarily it comes down to our mental wellness and our physical well being.
Finding Motivation that Nurtures our Mental well being.
But have you noticed the motivation under these fitness goals? We get told by society and the media that we need to look a certain way to be happy and to be beautiful.
Is that really the best motivator? Or at the end of the day will this only result in feeling guilty and being dissatisfied with ourselves?
There is nothing wrong with a wellness goal, that includes fitness or eating healthy, but the motivation behind it is so important!
It makes a difference in our soul when we are treating ourselves with love and kindness. And through those acts of love and kindness we may choose to nurture our body with nutritious food and movement.
Stay with me here. When you get your first car it is your pride and joy. You take care of it by washing it, giving it regular oil changes, and wiping down the interior on a regular basis. You show love and appreciation to that car with how well you maintain it on a daily basis.
Our mind and our body are the same way. It needs that regular show of love and appreciation.
Mental Wellness and Inner Dialogue
This is the tricky part. Are you showing your body love and appreciation by giving it rewards? Or are you being hard on yourself and your body? Are you forcing it to move in a way that it doesn’t like because “it is just not good enough”… because “you can do better than this.”
The point is, how are you talking to yourself? How are you talking to your body? Even when it comes to children and improving their behavior, we have come to learn through research that positive reinforcement works best and punishment isn’t very effective. So why do we continue to talk to ourselves this way?
So here is my challenge for the New Year: Use kind words when you are talking to yourself and your body. This challenge will call for some self awareness.
Bonus tip
Are thoughts become so automatic that we don’t realize we are having them?
So here is the tip: When you notice a feeling (especially the negative ones), trace it back, what thoughts brought up that feeling for you? Was it something you told yourself?
As you begin to notice these thoughts take an opportunity to switch up this dialogue and give yourself love! Consider what your best friend would tell you if she heard the inner dialogue you were having with yourself or what you would tell your friend to help her out of negative self talk.
If you are still struggling with your negative self-talk or now that you are more aware of it you are realizing there is more lying underneath the surface than you anticipated, I would be happy to provide you with more resources on building self-love. Schedule a free consultation with me over the phone. There is no reason why this can’t be your year to hit those mental wellness goals.
