Ep 121: 5 Ways to Make the Mirror Your Friend

This week on the podcast, I'm talking to you about the mirror.

When was the last time you looked in the mirror and liked what you saw? As we get older, it can get harder. It's pretty common to see our reflection and start criticizing ourselves for all the stuff that we don't like.

What if you were able to look in the mirror and see a familiar friend whom you loved and cherished? What if you were able to compliment yourself instead of criticize?

In this episode, I'm sharing 5 things you can do each morning to make the mirror your friend, not your foe.


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Transcript

0:51

Hello everyone and welcome back to Real Brave and Unstoppable for episode 121. As I record this, I'm really working hard on my morning routine and, really paying attention to, you know, how I talk to myself when I look in the mirror. And, it's been really helpful to kind of ground into that every morning and I wanted to kind of share with you today some of the things that, I've been doing. So I'm going to start off by telling you a story, about myself. I've always had a really tough relationship with my body. Never loved it, was always really mean to it. The mirror was not my friend for a long time. I've had an eating disorder, earlier in my life. Totally, like, body dysmorphia. saw in the mirror was not what I see today in pictures. It's like mind blowing actually. I'm like, what was I complaining about then? But I also really just have always had some really critical, harsh self talk about how I wasn't thin enough or in shape enough. My stomach is too flabby. My butt's too big. All the things, right? We know about this. But this of course filtered out into how I felt about my intelligence and my ability to achieve things as well. Like that classic perfectionist mindset. Now I have two kids. I have a daughter and a son. And the thought of passing this down to either one of them, but especially her, being a girl, is horrifying to me. It's absolutely terrifying. So there are a lot of things that I've been pretty mindful of over the years to not talk about or do when she's around. Like count calories or be overly judgmental about my body or what I've eaten. I make a point to like, you know, if we're going out for ice cream, like have some too or cake or whatever, because I want her to see that that's normal. Like we don't need to like cut out all of the quote unquote bad things. Right.? And for the most part, I think I've done a pretty good job with that. Of course I'm not perfect, but I've really made a, an intentional effort. But what goes on inside my head has been a totally different story and it's a monster that I still battle every day. It's gotten a lot better, but it's still there, that voice that says, that's not good enough. But one day, several years ago, I was standing in front of the mirror and I caught myself and like my inner mean girl, inner critic. Whatever you want to call it in conversation. Well, actually it was really her having the conversation with me and I was totally buying into it. Like I was in my underwear and I was like pinching all the fat rolls on my stomach and hips that I totally hated. My inner mean girl was, she was talking to me, you're so fat, disgusting, gross. How can you even like live with yourself for looking this way? It kind of makes me cringe when I think about that. Cause oh my God, so mean. Ooh. And then I had this moment of truth. I was doing all the things in front of my daughter to be like healthy and normal, quote unquote, and to teach her not to be unkind to herself, but I really wasn't in integrity with that when it was just me and my mirror. So I totally started crying. But I thought about that, like if I knew they were, either one of them was treating themselves the way I was in that moment, I would be totally devastated, literally devastated, because she's beautiful. Both of my kids are beautiful and I want them both to believe that about themselves. So in that moment, though, I realized that setting an example isn't really just what you do in public or in front of people. It's really being in integrity with that behind closed doors. Being in integrity with that in your mind, in your thoughts, and in your beliefs. That's how we grow. That's how we move forward when those things are aligned. But also in that moment, I told myself that I was, I was going to commit to work on this. And notice I said, work. For some of you this will resonate, and for some it won't... Um, but this is hard work. It's hard to look in the mirror and really, truly love what you see. Like we aren't taught this. We live in a society of constant improvement, being better. And then like the media, out in the world, what do you see? Like it's getting better, but it's still not what we need it to be. We're taught to hate our bodies. It can always be better. And as women, I don't really, I can't really speak for men, but as I know as a woman, we're taught that our bodies are objects, tools, and if they don't meet a certain random standard set by, well, I'm not even going to go there, then they aren't valuable. Well, fuck that, I say. And that's why this work is super important to me. Life is too short to be at war with myself, and, you know, the world has way bigger problems than whether or not I like how much I weigh. And what if, just what if, me committing to working on this made a difference? A difference in my daughter, my son, a difference in the world, and a difference in me. So today I'm going to talk about the mirror, being your friend. What if instead of seeing what's wrong, you looked for all the things that were right? So I'm going to share today five things that you can say to yourself or questions you can ask each morning to really get your day off to a great start. Set the stage for your day. So I first want to pose a question to you. How is being unkind to yourself when you look in the mirror serving you? There's a hidden benefit or a false reward. Otherwise we just wouldn't do it. So what is that? Commonly in my experience working with other people and in myself, the false reward is that we think it will motivate us. People does that sound familiar? People who have a hard time accepting their body or even loving it are afraid that if they do that, or in other words, like they drop the mean bootcamp drill sergeant language, they'll let themselves go or they'll get fat or that those harsh words are actually motivating them to be better To lose weight or get in shape or whatever. Well, they're totally not. Research shows this, but some of the consequences of negative self talk are depression, anxiety, increased stress, social anxiety, reduced success, perfectionism, you know, never being happy with yourself, limited thinking, or a hard time believing in yourself, relationship challenges. It's a lot of stuff. Research has shown that it's not helpful as a motivator, even though we think it might be. The research does show that positive reinforcement makes a desired behavior more likely to happen and can also be used to shape behavior. So I'm going to use, forgive me, but I'm going to use the example of dog training for a minute. So if you don't have a dog, bear with me, but if you have a dog and you've ever like worked on training a dog, you might resonate with this. The difference between negative reinforcement or punishment and positive reinforcement, I'm going to talk about here. So when you train a dog using positive reinforcement, they learn to want to do things for you. If they don't know what you're asking them to do, they'll try any behavior they can to get the treat until they land on the right one. The dog is learning that you yourself are the source of a reward, even an intrinsic reward, like just being around and interacting with. I had a chocolate lab a long time ago that we did clicker training with her. And one of the things that we were supposed to do is just wait for her to do the behavior, like sit, like she saw a treat and she knew she had to do something. And so we would wait until she sat to click and then give the treat. So she learned to connect the word sit with that behavior. But with punishment, think about this. It's true of dogs and also like people, where we learn pretty quickly that sticking your neck out can get us in trouble. So we don't want to try anything new. So in dogs, punishment can actually create behavior problems like anxiety. My same dog that I talked about with the clicker training, we adopted her, and when we first got her, she was really afraid of everything. And I'm not sure of what her background was, but definitely she was not positively reinforced. It took a lot of training to get her to the point where she wasn't so afraid of punishment anymore. And it's the same with humans. So externally, think about kids in abusive households, or people who have, like, tyrannical bosses, terrible work environments. People shrink to not create problems or conflict, to kind of fly beneath the radar and not get in trouble. So think about how that negative reinforcement or negative motivation affects you. Motivating yourself from a place of self hatred instead of self love. Your higher self loves you and wants you to be motivated from a place of love. But if you listen to your inner critic instead, you'll never even sustain the accomplishments you reach because you can't sustain the negativity in a way that's good for you or your health. So, what do we do here? First I want to talk a little bit about thoughts and emotions, and this relates a little bit to what I just shared about motivation. So when you think the thought, I'm fat, or I'm overweight, or I have a flabby stomach, how do you feel? So here's a little refresher on this, in case you've forgotten or haven't listened to the episodes on thoughts and feelings. But our thoughts create our feelings. This is a simplistic way of looking at it, but thoughts create feelings and our feelings can fuel our actions if we're not really intentional about it. And most of us are not super intentional with our thoughts all the time. So when you think thoughts like that, you might feel hopeless or inferior, for example. Recognizing this example may not resonate for everyone. Some of you may never think these thoughts. And what do you do or not do when you feel hopeless or inferior? Well, this can take on a lot of forms depending on the person. So here are some examples. Sally might skip gym workouts. Susie might have a day where she screws up and says, fuck it. I'll start again tomorrow. Let me have all the cheesecake tonight or gee, that bottle of wine looks good, especially since it'll help me not feel all of these despair- y feelings. On the other hand, Jane might go to the gym and work out extra hard and she might end up burning out because what she's doing is unsustainable. Or she might overtrain leading to exhaustion and injury, or maybe she'll even hate working out because she's associated it with something negative. The end result though, is that those actions do not lead to loving yourself. They just keep fueling self loathing. People think they'll be happier once they get to a certain weight or, you know, they have, they can see their bicep muscles or whatever, right? They think there'll be happy then, but most people, most people get there and it's still not enough. I want to repeat that and I want you to really, really take this in. Most people, when they get to the goal, they think they want to be quote unquote better. It's not enough. So what do you do then? So here's where we have to let go of this false reward and really recognize that it's not helping at all. So what if we were able to just love ourselves? Just stick with me here. What if? Imagine a world where we were able to love ourselves and just want to be our best selves. What if we knew what was really important to us and how we found meaning and purpose and just followed that route? What if that was possible for you? What if you were able to feel amazing regardless of what the scale said or what size clothes you wore? The thing people don't realize is that if you actually accept your body, you won't be beating it up when you look in the mirror because your mind has shifted. You won't care about letting yourself go because you love yourself too much to let yourself go. You focus on what's good for you. And when you feel good, you don't focus on stuff like being the right shape or size or comparing yourself to the latest cover model on Vogue. You just won't care because you'll feel amazing. So what if your thought was, I feel amazing. I take care of myself. I eat healthy. I work on being the best version of me every day. I'm strong. How does that feel? What actions do you want to take when you think thoughts like that? So this doesn't mean you can't want to get stronger or, you know, if you If you do need to lose weight, it doesn't mean you can't want to do those things, but it means you're approaching those things from a place of love, not hate or self loathing. If you wanted to encourage someone that you love, how would you do it? I doubt you'd say mean things to them and expect them to change. It's like the encouraging coach versus the yelling one. For those of you who have played sports, have you ever had a coach who just yells when you do something wrong? Not super motivating, right? But if you have a coach that's like really encouraging and, you know, points out your mistakes or things you could do better, but also really praises you for the things that you do well, like how much more motivating is that? Okay, so here is where we talk about how to make the mirror your friend. And it's not going to happen overnight and you won't always look in the mirror and go, Oh, awesome. I love everything about this. That's okay. Like just acknowledge that. It's all right, but let's, you know, let's work on that for the most part, making the mirror a friend. Like looking in the mirror and seeing the reflection of what's really amazing and you know, not putting so much weight on the things you don't think are amazing because those are just thoughts. Each morning, I want you, and really want you to try this, I'll do it with you this week. First thing in the morning, I want you to look in the mirror. And just look at yourself. And first, just notice how you feel- emotionally, physically. And just really look at yourself lovingly, and go through these five things. So first, notice how you're feeling. I notice I'm feeling judgmental. I notice I'm feeling calm. I notice I'm feeling excited. And then, my body feels... how does your body feel? My body feels blank. My body feels tense. My body feels loose. I feel flexible. I feel ready to start the day. My body feels like it's ready to go. Then notice your thoughts. I notice my thoughts are XYZ. I notice that I'm, I'm thinking that my butt's too big. I notice that I'm focusing on my wrinkles. My wrinkles are making me look old. okay. And then you want to say to yourself, I'm just observing what's going on in myself right now. There's nothing to fix here. It's just an experience I'm having my thoughts, my feelings, physically how I feel. That's all just an experience. No big deal. I'm just noticing. Okay, so next thing, number two, is What are three things that you love and appreciate about yourself? So stand in the mirror and look at yourself and say, say it out loud. I appreciate and love these three things about myself. Or you can say you to yourself in the mirror. This morning I appreciated that I am strong. I'm resilient. I'm ready to dive in and do the work when I need to. When I want to. Those were three things. Number three is what are you excited about today? There's got to be something, something, even if it's tiny. So say it out loud. Kortney, I'm excited about this one thing today. Today, I have a full day of clients. I'm excited to see how I can help people today. Number four. Let yourself be a work in progress, but also recognize you can give yourself more credit for something today. So, say it to yourself, Kortney, or whatever your name is, I'm allowed to be a work in progress, and one thing I can give myself more credit for today is, blank. For me, I'm dealing with something right now that's like kind of hard. So it's like, okay, I'm going to give myself a little more credit for how I'm handling that. Cause I'm tending to go to the, I should have done that different, but okay, fine. But what give me, what's something I can give myself more credit for? And number five, just acknowledge that today's going to be a great day. You're going to make it a great day. So say it out loud. I'm going to make today a great day. If I'm going through a tough time, it's just like a storm. It will pass. Life is not all great, right? We have good and we have bad. So, of course, every day is going to bring a little of both. So, let's focus on like how can, and it doesn't mean we're ignoring the things that are hard. But we're forcing our brain to look at something. We're forcing our brain to look at the possibility that today can be a great day. Even if it's not all great, it can still be great. Okay. So starting your day off and a recap here, starting your day off this way is going to help you so much. Little steps like this will add up to really big progress and you are creating new neural pathways in your brain. And that takes a little time, but you can shift your mindset about yourself. And it is a work in progress. I know this, I experienced this, but if you practice it consistently, you'll be able to shift that mindset. And you'll notice gradually that your mind will go there more often than the old negative way. Is it easy? Simple? Yes. Easy. Not always. So stick with it. It'll be worth it. Okay, so one more thing. If this resonated with you, I highly recommend writing down these things on a note card or something. Or you can create your own things to say to yourself. You could even turn it into a journaling practice, but I do think it's really important to do it in front of the mirror. So some other things that you could try on for like saying to yourself too is like, I believe in myself. I'm a really great person. My confidence and my self esteem are high. I know my worth. I love who I am. I am strong. I am capable of overcoming anything. No challenge is too great for me. My life is abundant and fulfilling. I'm committed to my personal growth. I'm proud of you that... I forgive you for blank. I commit to you today that blank. So before I go, I want to share two things. First, a couple of quotes about this. Number one, your body loves you. Love it back. Two, your body is a reflection of your journey. So love and accept it for all that it is. And I don't know who said those first two quotes, but this next one is from, is by Louise Hay, a couple of really great books and she's it's kind of known for the mirror work thing, but her, the quote is You've been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn't worked. So try approving of yourself and see what happens. Love that. So second, if you're not already part of my community, I would love to have you. I've dropped the link below in the show notes so you can follow that link and get a free workbook that will help you create the life you want. A life full of purpose and meaning and self love. So hop on over there and I'll also again drop that link in the show notes. Okay my friends, thank you so much for joining me today. I will see you next time.