Rewriting negative self talk with personal victories...

Rewriting negative self talk takes years - believe me I know. I was looking through some old boxes of photos and came across these: family summer holiday - maybe 7 years ago. These photos represent a massive personal victory for me. I know, on the face of it, it may look like I’m just jumping off a pontoon into the sea, but this event was monumental in my little world.

As a child I didn’t learn to swim tiI I was 13, which is pretty late. I had eczema top to toe so swimming in a chlorinated pool aggravated my skin beyond belief, and swimming in the sea stung way too much, though it was widely regarded that salt water was good for eczema. My mother also doesn’t know how to swim and is quite fearful of water so it was never on the list of things to do. So whilst I learnt to swim in my teenage years - I wasn’t super comfortable doing it. 

The thing about self talk is, it’s really powerful. And sadly, a vast majority of us are wired in a way that means self talk often manifests itself as negative. That little voice cutting you down.  It may only be a whisper in the depths of your brain but the consistent stream of verbal cues we give ourselves take root, getting stronger as the years roll by. With great power, comes great responsibility (yes, I am quoting the Spiderman film - who is btw my favourite superhero) - so surely it serves us well to turn that voice into our superhero rather than our arch nemesis?

The reality is, I wasn’t brought up thinking “I can” or “just have a go”. The prospect of “having a go” came with a raft of caveats so I ended up creating a bunch of unfounded beliefs that all led down the road of “I can’t”. 

Fast forward to becoming a mother and the relevance of the photos (!) Firstly  - as soon as my kids were toddlers I enrolled them in swimming classes. I certainly didn’t want to saddle my kids with my nervousness around water - besides which I feel swimming is a really important life skill. Anyway, after years of summer holidays it became apparent to my kids that I rarely venture into the sea if we were on a beach, certainly not more than ankle depth. 

Now, I couldn’t tell you if it was a “their personality” thing, a generational thing or a parenting thing - probably a bit of all three. But even if there was some initial resistance, my children were always open to trying new things and having a go - something I found admirable, but unusual. So my lack of “sea antics” became glaringly obvious. 

We were lucky enough to go to Crete on summer holidays and there was this pontoon in the sea, by the hotel we were staying at. It became my kids’ life mission to get me to swim to the pontoon. The thing about my kids, or most kids in fact, is that they can be ridiculously persistent. So they wouldn’t stop till I said yes. But the thought was pretty nerve wracking to me. The negative self talk was out in force - “you can’t swim very well”, “you’re not sporty”, “you look like an idiot when you swim”. I could go on. But my kids and their badgering won. 

Although it really wasn’t far from the beach, it was like me swimming The Channel. It is hard, even now, to verbalise, the sense of achievement when I managed to step onto that pontoon. I then realised I’d been hoodwinked. There was a set of steps to get up and down from the water but my children wanted me to jump off and swim back to the beach.

I can honestly say, up until then I had never jumped off anything into the open sea. “Are you out of your mind?” was my overriding thought. But again, my kids’ persistence excelled - I suppose if I were feeling kind - I would say they were tenacious. 

Now this is where self talk gets interesting. In amongst the meleé of negative voices in my head, there was the tiniest murmur that said “why not have a go?”....

I do not know why I chose to listen to that voice that afternoon, but after a lot of coaching. I jumped. And it was really fun. I mean - I had to put visions of me jumping in so deep that I cracked my skull on a rock out of my head - but it was exhilarating, and I did it several times. 

My point is this - sometimes there is very little substance to the banks of negative self talk we build up. Some of it is of our own making, some gets stored because someone made a passing comment once and yes, sometimes people want to be negative, they want to put seeds of doubt in our brains, or they can’t see the detrimental effect their words have. But we have a choice - we get to choose whether those seeds sprout or not. 

And on a personal note, not knowing how to do something does not make us weaker, or ignorant and it certainly does not make us lesser - if anything it provides us with the opportunity to learn and grow and experience new things.

This period of lockdown has caused me to really think about how I live my life - and I welcome introspection. The whole range of challenges we are traversing through including #blacklivesmatter and Coronavirus are far from straightforward. Though sometimes it is crystal clear what is right or wrong.  But I am hopeful that this time of sometimes uncomfortable reflection and growth will bring positive, lasting change. 

And on a personal level that starts with each of us, the way we conduct ourselves and our self talk. We are allowed to close off the negative self talk, we are allowed to change our beliefs - and whilst sometimes the changes in self talk may be small, they can be profound - and it’s never too late. 

I really hope that I get to jump into the sea from a pontoon this year, though I don’t know how likely that will be - hell maybe I’ll upgrade to jumping off a rock .... 

We are all works in progress

Part of my bedrock in life is finding a silver lining in every situation - I am almost compulsive about this. And since lockdown I check in with myself several times a day and say thank you mentally for pretty much everything from waking up in the morning, having a body that does what it does, having hot and cold running water, having a roof over my head to having food in the fridge - you get the picture….having everything I NEED around me. And make no mistake, I know how lucky this makes me. 

Whilst we are indeed in this as a collective, the bubbles in which we live have become even more distinct. Lockdown has really distilled in my mind what I actually need in life to be happy and content; the list is pretty streamlined - and I know I am not alone in this revelation. 

If you follow me on social media you will know I did saunter around my house the other day in orange stilettos because I missed wearing them - but I know full well that they fall in the superfluous category.

Moving forwards, I feel many of us are looking at how we used to live, and whether we want to “go back” to that when we are allowed to do so. Certainly for me, what I buy, what I need and how much I need are so clear-cut now. I am finding myself to be much more discerning in every area of my life - and it is actually very welcome.

Another consequence of lockdown is we are spending more time in our own company and giving our thoughts more oxygen than perhaps we would have done, or had time to do in the past.

Broadly speaking, I don’t find it difficult to spend time with myself, so I feel there are many beneficial (non-materialistic) things that will come out of this time. But sometimes healthy introspection can take an unforeseen turn and lead us down a rabbit hole and those little (but powerful) negative voices can grab a hold.

Though I don’t mind being up close and personal with emotional-me, I do find it harder when I put “self” in front of certain words: self-confidence, self-esteem, self-love, self-compassion, self-empowerment. Depending on the day, these words can make me feel really rather uncomfortable.

Of all of these “self” words, self-esteem - the way we evaluate ourselves - is probably my biggest challenge. For me, self-esteem is the deepest internal layer.

And whilst I do understand that self-esteem comes from ourselves, because the clue is in the word (!) - I do feel that initially, from babyhood in fact, we take our lead from those closest to us and form our self-evaluation, in part, through the perception they (our parents, our families, our friends) have of us. Wonderful, if they think we are the best thing since sliced bread, but not so great if not. 

What I have realised over the years is that self esteem is directly linked to self compassion - how you treat yourself; and this imposed alone time has led me to moments of evaluation and I have started noticing, more often, when I’m not being nice to myself. 

At the beginning of lockdown - I set myself many many targets. I honestly think I thought overloading my routine and keeping busy was the answer. Very quickly I realised - it was not. Often I wasn’t in the mood - I wanted to go with the flow - spend the afternoon reading, or dancing, or - doing nothing….I’m one of those people who will always get done what needs to get done, I am hardwired that way - and there was definitely an internal standoff between the “doing” me and “being” me. 

So I was not achieving what I wanted to achieve in a day, which led me to be quite damning of myself and in turn my self-compassion took a hit. But as the days rolled on, I started catching myself and consciously changing my self-talk - to a gentler, kinder tone more of the time. In fact, basically cutting myself the same slack I would afford everyone I like and love. 

And it is a two way street - when I am kinder to myself it has a positive knock on effect on my self-esteem. I mean I don’t think I’m the dog’s bollocks (I have never understood this phrase, but I like it), but some days I might be pretty close :)

Honestly, this personal inner work is an unexpected byproduct of lockdown - I like to think I do this stuff most days - but it is really satisfying my desire for silver linings. 

Our relationships with ourselves are an iterative process and we will always be tweaking and quite right too - we are works in progress. I don’t believe that changes - but I do feel as we become more aware - more self-aware, we are able to hold ourselves accountable in a loving way, and raise ourselves up rather than cutting ourselves off at the knees  - as we would for those we care about - and in turn leads to a healthier self-everything.

The beauty of breath

Our ability to breathe is remarkable; I know I’m stating the obvious, but we do it without thinking.

We have the capacity to change our breathing consciously by - gasping or sighing for instance, but we can also affect it subconsciously depending on how we are feeling. Mood is inextricably linked to breath.

Last week, I mentioned on an Instagram post that life has been a little up and down of late. I tend to not let stress get to me, and actually I think I am pretty effective at dealing with a high baseline of stress.

But I know in myself when I am feeding off it in a positive way and when I am not - and I haven’t been lately so I knew I had to do something.

I’m sure like me you have daily practices that punctuate your day, that are good for your general wellbeing. Some people run or go for power walks, others like me start their day with meditation. I also exercise about 4-5 times a week - and of course I sing most days.

But over the last month or so these “good practices” haven’t been as effective as normal. I am doing them but they are not keeping me as balanced as I would like and the more I noticed I wasn’t feeling refreshed after mediating, or I wasn’t using my voice in the way that I wanted, the more annoyed I was getting with myself.

Then last week I realised, it wasn’t what I was doing that was failing me – it was how I was doing it - and specifically how I was breathing.

When I look to my Indian background, most of my extended family practises some sort of yoga. My mother has been doing it since she was at school and now in her 80s, it is still how she starts her day.

Yoga teachers (yogis) have known of the benefits of mindful breathing for centuries. And over the years, scientific research has corroborated these benefits. Paying attention to how we breathe is one of the most effective tools to lower stress levels and improve our mood.

I pride myself on understanding the mechanics and benefits of breathing properly, especially because good breath control is fundamental in singing.

But, and this may sound silly, I have remembered that it is not enough to just breathe; the rate at which we breathe is vital. It is related to the autonomic nervous system which controls our bodies’ sympathetic response (which is the fight or flight thing) and parasympathetic response, which is our rest and restore function, which feeds into our heart rate and respiration, which go up or down depending on whether we are relaxed or stressed or somewhere in between.

Over the last week I have been taking the time to really tap into my breath. There is something beautiful about concentrating on stillness, and tuning into breathing.

I have reminded myself that like so many things, it is not enough to just go through the motions. Consciously breathing is helping me replenish my energy, strengthen my “good practices” and make me feel like I have a solid foundation from which I can tackle the stresses that may come my way.

So now I have a new daily practice - as soon as I wake up (or whenever I need to) I stop and focus in on my breath - soft and slow breaths to start that become deeper and lower the longer I concentrate. And though I am pretty sure I knew this, I am remembering that deep, low abdominal breathing is truly transformative.