WORDS

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” This is a lie. Words do hurt. Words spoke to others and words spoke inside one’s head can have life altering consequences.

My blog today will focus on the words we speak to ourselves either in our head or out loud. Words such as, “I can’t”. Negative words. Negative thinking.  There was a time in my life that I would say “I can’t” a lot. Whether it was I can’t get out of bed, or I can’t stop myself from eating this whole candy bar (or two), or I can’t do fill-in-the-blank. This is basically a victim mentality.  “I can’t” puts other things or people in control. “I can’t” keeps me from taking responsibility for my thoughts and behaviors. Most of the time “I can’t” really means “I don’t want to”.  It has taken me a long time to get to this point in my life. I do still occasionally say, “I can’t”, but catch myself and change the wording to “I don’t want to.”

Another negative pattern that I recently caught myself doing was going back to a time period and continually listing all the bad things that happened. I used this as an excuse for not moving forward.  For example, last September my basement flooded. Actually, on the Sunday evening before, I received an emotionally upsetting email. Woke up Monday to a flooded basement. The following Monday I started school. The next week my dog had to be taken to UGA veterinarian hospital. There are several more things that happened even after that. Yes, that was a very rough time. However, six or seven months later I was still listing those things as a oh poor me.  A victim mentality of look at all the bad surrounding me. I can’t do this because of all this….etc.

A conversation I have had many times with my children is you can control your thoughts and you can control your behaviors. No one else can control what you do and think. Negative thinking will lead to depression. I know. I know how one little bad thought can snowball into obsessive worry and fear. I know how words like “I can’t” and “I am so overwhelmed” and “I don’t have time” can paralyze me from doing things. I also know that if something is really important enough to me, I will find a way to get it done. When I become uncomfortable enough with the way things are, I will change it.

Complaining is negative thinking out loud. Sometimes I just want to complain about everything. The weather, my finances, my animals, my hair. I have discovered that complaining can have that same snowball effect as I mentioned before. It is kinda like when I am cleaning my house (rare occasions) and I take something into another room and I see something that needs to be done there, too. Suddenly, the whole house (in my mind) is totally filthy, disorganized, and somehow it is my kids’ or the animals’ fault. No one ever does anything around here! I have to do everything and I don’t have time and I can’t…..see what happens? Negativity. So, I take a deep breath, or ten, and re-focus.

Only I can control what is going on inside my head. Until I grasp that concept, I will let negative thoughts control me. I will let circumstances and other people control me. I will continue to use negative thoughts to relieve me from any responsibility of doing the hard work of growing mentally and emotionally healthy.

I will end this with one of my favorite Scriptures from the book of Philippians, chapter 4 verse 8: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable---if anything is excellent or praiseworthy---think about such things.” (italics mine)