September 3, 2022 "Why do you treat yourself that way?"
Look at my acne. This is how my face use to look when I use to eat a lot of sweets (cake in hand), drink sweet tea and pop. As soon as I stopped, incorporated more water and started exercising the acne all went away. I started treating myself better.
If your worst enemy gave you diabetes what would you do?
If your parent(s) gave you high blood pressure what would you do?…. Oh, my bad, that was not a great question.…they already do!
Back to the questions. If your bestfriend gave you high cholesterol what would you do?
When people treat us bad, insult us, talk about us, or do us wrong in any kind of way, many of us are ready to fight or cancel them from our lives forever.
And don’t let someone talk about your mother or kids. Most folks don’t play about family, you would be ready to go to jail defending them.
But what do you do when you treat yourself horribly? When you give yourself type 2 diabetes, when you continue eating high cholesterol foods, when you eat food high in sodium until your feet swell or you’re placed on dialysis. Who will you blame, fight or cancel from your life then?
When we FINALLY realize how we are treating ourselves, why don’t we stop?
I often give this analogy when clients drink only a shake or eat a banana calling it a meal.
“If your boo said, I’m so proud of you, get dressed I’m going to take you out to eat." At the restaurant they order for you. They order themselves a full entree (protein, carb & veggies) and they order you a shake. What would you do? As you sit there and pout and maybe curse them out. "They say, wait, I’m only treating you how you treat yourself.”
How we treat ourselves is often a reflection of how we value ourselves. You’ve heard the saying all your life. Treat people how you want to be treated. But in most cases we treat ourselves really bad but expect others to treat us like kings and queens.
If you knew that how you were treating yourself right now, would cause you much money, time, pain and then an early death, would you still do it? Or would you break the cycle?
This seems to be our cycle of life:
We Netflix and chill
during the WINTER
Grind in the SPRING
Shine in the SUMMER
And then we FALL back into our old habits.
How can we break this cycle? It’s very difficult to force ourselves to feel a certain way about who we are. Changing unhelpful thoughts is useful to some extent especially if those thoughts are overly harsh and simply not true.
I suggest we start the process of changing our behavior. We can choose to act lovingly to ourselves, even if we don’t really feel it. Start by acting like you’re someone who matters. Pretend you like yourself. Pretend you care about your own happiness. Pretend your needs are more than an afterthought.
Try these four strategies to show yourself this kind of care:
1- Take the time to plan your day in a thoughtful way. So much of our time is spent running from activity to activity. We are constantly being pulled from all angles, making it almost impossible to take care of ourselves. And it always seems that everything is taking too long making us impatient and stressed. Sometime this is unavoidable; Other times we can arrange our days in a friendly way that protect our basic sanity and needs.
2- Prepare your meals. Act as if you’re cooking for someone you care about. Think about what that person likes. Imagine how you want that person to feel when he or she sits down to eat the food. In other words, pretend you’re someone worth making a nice healthy meal for.
3- Carefully consider your own needs and how you can meet them. Again, extend the same kindness to yourself that you probably extend to others. Research shows that knowing what our needs are is linked to greater emotional stability, more security in our relationships, and less fear about using food and or drinks as a coping mechanism. And, of course, recognizing our needs makes is more likely to fulfill them.
4- Surround yourself with people who bring out the best in you. Relationships can have powerful Effects on our well-being. Seek out the people who build you up, and minimize contact with those who bring you down.
Take a good look at yourself, your cycle of life and if you FINALLY see how bad you are treating you. Stop it right now, follow these tips, and treat yourself better!
No Mess
